Sweet, sweet ignorance
by Seeker of the Skies
Summary: Life is hell. Cocoon and Pulse, the two superpowers that rule the world war against each other in a vicious fight that the populace are blind to see. We are their pawns, who obey their every order. We must do what they tell us even if it means being torn limb from limb. But they don't care what happens to us. No one cares. AU. M
1. Forgotten memories

_The first chapter of my second story, I don't know why but this account just spent three months without getting updared once, probably because I loathe the second chapter of my first story. The unfortunate thing is that when I actually really felt like writing it my sister got an assignment which stopped me from using our laptop. So I wrote this on my school laptop (Year nine kids in NSW get them each year, yays)._

_A quick summary of the story because I didn't really get some of this information out in the summary: Their are two coporations, Cocoon and Pulse, they control everything in the world, goverment and all. In the shadows they wage a war against each other that only the people caught up in it are aware of, the rest of the world is left ignorant. By the start of this story, pulse is beginning to lose as cocoon takes more control over the world from them. And so on with the story._

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square enix does.**_

* * *

><p><strong><em>Forgotten Memories<em>**

"Topaz, hurry up you slowpoke or we're going to miss the bus." Lebreau yelled over the sound of the semi loud traffic that was currently perpetual on the main road to their left. Just behind her, a girl with amazing sky blue eyes and extremely curly golden blonde hair that was obviously dyed ran to catch up with her, almost tripping over in the process.

"Hey, I'm not a slowpoke; you're just going 100 kilometres an hour while hyped up on ice coffee!" She practically screeched back before coming to stand by her finally stationary friend as they prepared to catch the bus parked at a bus-stop in front of them.

While they waited for the other passengers to get on, Topaz crossed her arms and pouted. "I seriously should have listened to your mums warning about not giving you any ice coffee, you kept me and Anna up all night with your incessant rumbling and even now your still completely hypo, how is that even possible?"

An almost demented smirk came across Lebreau's face at the questioning, something that was in no circumstances a good sign.

"That because I snuck some more out of your fridge when you and Anna weren't looking this morning." she promptly answered

The response was Topaz hitting her head on the closest pole.

"Oh dear lord, and I still have to deal with you at school, goddess help me." Topaz moaned.

Before Lebreau had the chance to say anything else, the bus driver gruffly yelled over from the bus if she was getting on or not, so nodding Lebreau apologised for getting distracted and grabbed Topaz's hand and they both clambered on to the bus. Taken their seats, the bus started up and drove away from the sidewalk and down the street. Chancing a quick look over at the still hypo Lebreau, Topaz began to wonder how the hell she'd survive this day.

But that was just the thing, she wouldn't.

"Serah." a dark haired woman whispered to herself from a car parked not too far down the street from where the bus had just been only moments ago. She sat watching the sidewalk, thinking of the girl she'd seen get on the vehicle only moments ago.

Moving away from the window, she lied back against the car seat. Sighing, she spoke up to a brown haired girl who sat across from her.

"It's no use you know." she told her.

"Hm." the girl, obviously still decently young, hummed

"It's no use." the women reiterated "no matter how hard they try, if cocoon really wants something, then they'll do anything to get their hands on it. No matter how hard you try to hide it, no one can run from them for long."

The girl simply nodded as a response, knowing the statement to be fact and looked down, and without turning her gaze upwards, asked the woman in front of her "Fang, if you know it's useless then why you do try to protect her like you do?"

"What else can I do." Fang answered quickly, a hint of anger in her voice "Cocoons out for her blood because of all that trouble she cooked up a few months ago, and to top it off, because of those idiots at pulse for erasing her memory she doesn't even know it. She goes around by a fake name thinking she has amnesia, living with a woman who she views as the person that saved her, while truth be told 'Anna' is nothing but a pulse agent assigned to protect her." shaking her head before continuing she then said. "But of course, knowing what 'Anna's' really like, the moment cocoon finds where pulse is hiding Serah, she'd up and leave her and let cocoon get her." Fang spat, hate of the women evident in her voice.

But not finished yet, she continued hotly "And, and I just can't let that happen, leaving her alone like that would be like leaving a kid to fight off a pack of hungry sharks"

The brown haired girl lifted her head back up and nodded once more, pausing tentatively before she moved to speak "Guess you're right." halting, she changed the subject abruptly and inquired out of curiosity "Just asking, but why are you so protective this girl, I mean know Anna's a heartless bitch most the time and is likely, just as you said, to leave Serah to fend off cocoon by herself rather than help her but you've never given me any other reasons for this protectiveness of yours?"

Fang gave a little laugh; it was almost a chilling sound, as it didn't hold anything close to humour. "And who said I ever owed you that information?" taking a moment to let the girl see that reasons weren't anything she'd be getting soon Fang added with a shrug "All I have to tell you is that Serah is the last person who deserves this." stopping briefly, she said in a much quieter voice, that the girl who sat in the car with her wasn't even sure Fang had meant her to hear "Plus, I have a feeling that certain someone would bury me alive if she got hurt on my watch."

The girl her turned head away from Fang to view out the window, saying to the women across from her "None of us deserve this Fang, we didn't start this war, cocoon and pulse did, we're nothing but their pawns, to be used as they see fit."

Listening indifferently to the girl words, Fang leaned back against the car seat and signed, in her moment of silence the other women decided to speak again, this time asking Fang a question.

"Hey Fang, who was it that would bury you if somethi-

She stopped as if hit by the stupidity of the question, lurching forward she quickly asked.

"Wait, it was it Li-"

"Shut it Nataliah!" Fang cut her off angrily.

Nataliah flinched back scared; knowing that she'd overstepped the boundaries, and remained in that position for a few seconds before she slowly she relaxed and apologised

"I'm sorry, I forgot, I...I didn't mean to." She stuttered out

"Just don't say that name" Fang stated firmly, vicious anger lacing her voice. Watching as Nataliah cowered back from her menacing gaze for a time, she lowered her eyes and leaned forward, laying her head in her hands and sighing. After a couple of seconds passed without her uttering a word and too Nataliah afraid to speak, Fang muttered "I'm getting tired of this."

"You're not only one Fang." Nataliah said hesitantly "We all are."

Glancing up quickly Fang motioned for Nataliah to get the driver going; if they stayed on talking like this the bus would get to the school before them. Straightening up Fang sighed again and looked out the window, and muttering in a voice that was she knew was too quiet to reach Nataliah's ears, to someone she knew would never hear it "I'm sorry." she muttered "But I don't think I can protect your sister for you much longer."

Arriving at Bodhum high school, the driver of Fangs and Nataliah's car turned the vehicle into the car park, parked it, and waiting silently for further instructions.

Leaning out the window slightly Fang started watching the bus bay for ''Topaz's" bus to arrive.

Behind her Nataliah tried to start up a conversation with the currently silent driver.

"Hey you, what's your name?" she asked inquisitively

Gnawing on his lip, a sign of nervousness, he stayed silent for a second or so before haltingly answering "They've told me not to tell you."

"Aww come on, you don't have to tell me your real one" she complained playfully "Just make something up, just so I can know you by something." she said, putting emphasise on the something.

Looking up at her with the same nervousness, he answered unsurely. "Then call me Travis, it was my father's name." he added more quietly.

Smiling in an effort to put him at ease Nataliah reached her hand out to him for to shake "Well then how do you do Travis, I'm Nataliah" shrugging she tacked on "it's not my read name of course but it will do I guess"

"Guess it will" he said with a little more courage and grabbed Nataliah's extended hand and shook it.

From behind, Fang turned her gaze away from the window ever so slightly so that she could glance at the pair of them. Sometimes she couldn't help but envy Nataliah, it was always so easy for her to shake off negative emotions, while she without much thought could tell that their previous conversation would be weight heavily on her for likely most the day, yet here was Nataliah happy, smiling and already added another friend to her army of millions. That thought brought on another to reason envy the girl, not one that referred to herself, but to others, Nataliah was always so good at making friend, just a smile you adored the girl, Fang couldn't say the same about herself, she was much more a master of making enemies if anything, but she preferred it that way, she didn't like people very much, but even with a dislike of everyone around you, when it came to attracting enemies, she didn't hold a candle to Li-

Fang quickly ended that thought, scolding herself for even letting it come anywhere near her mind, she was gone there was nothing she could do about it, the only thing she could do now was make sure that Serah didn't suffer the same fate.

Looking back through the window Fang took note that Serah's bus had arrived, so twisting back towards Nataliah and Travis she informed them "Hey that damn bus is finally here."

Nataliah jokingly saluted her and added a quick winked "See ya then, go enjoy spending your day with immature teenagers with 21yearold disorder." she said laughing.

"Go fuck yourself." Fang retorted sharply causing Nataliah to flinch back but she had a feeling that the girl just found it funny, but behind her Fang noticed Travis tense up and couldn't help but wonder if he was a little on the green side. A more experienced agent wouldn't have reacted like he did, and it was probable considering she hadn't seen him before today.

Turning her back on the two, Fang got out of the car and began to walk towards Serah, who had now gotten out of the bus and was standing with her friends.

Before she was out of earshot, Nataliah yelled her a quick "Bye Atla!" from a window she opened just for the purpose, something that earned her a quick flip of the bird from Fang, before she persevered to ignore whatever else was yelled her way from the car and walked off.

Upon reaching Serah and her small group of friends, Fang couldn't help but notice that Lebreau was acting strange and as if reading her thoughts Yuj drew closer to her and whispered in her ear "Warning, Lebreau has been drinking ice coffee."

Oh goddess help me she said in her mind. Just what she needed, more fuel to add to pissing her off and she couldn't help but think, this is going to be a long day.

...:...

Back inside the car Travis and Nataliah's previous conversation was struck back up by Travis beginning by asking "Why did you call her Atla?"

"Because it's the fake name she uses here." Nataliah answered casually.

Purging his lips, he looked her in the face and asked "Why Atla, it's sound kind of strange."

Nataliah shrugged off the comment and answered "It comes from the name Atlas, and if you know much about Greek mythology, Atlas was the titan who held up the heavens."

"And what exactly does that have to do with why she calls herself Atla?"

"Let me finish what I'm saying first." Nataliah scolded.

After he nodded apologetically, his shyness rearing its face again, she elaborated "She calls herself Atla because hypothetically, the agents of both pulse and cocoon bare the weight of the world on our shoulders, because we are the ones who fight this war, we are the ones who will in the end effect the fate of this world, not the corporations of pulse and cocoon, it's what we do that will change this worlds fate, for better or for worse."

Travis raised his eyebrows at the answer, running it through his mind "Wasn't really expecting that kind of answer."

Nataliah shrugged her shoulders again and told him "It was something a close friend told Fang a long time ago, I've never heard the full saying, but it went along the lines of that the agents are Atlas and if we give up the whole world will come crashing down, so no matter what we have to keep fighting."

Leaning his back on his seat Travis stayed silent for a time before curiosity made him ask another question "How exactly would the world come crashing down if you stopped fighting?"

A slight frowned appeared on Nataliah's mouth before she gave him the answer "Because if we stopped fighting than cocoon would win and seize the rest of the control of this world off pulse and the world we know would be destroyed under cocoon reign." pausing, she looked up so she could hold Travis's gaze "And we just can't let that happen." She finished.

He nodded, a little stunned by the tone of the response "Is cocoon really that bad?" he asked.

"You have no idea." Nataliah answered solemnly, shaking her head.

Travis watched as she became increasingly downcast at the utterance of those words, so he decided to try his hand at taking her mind away from them "Hey can I ask you another question?"

Looking up at him she seemed like she was about to laugh "You've been asking a lot of those you know."

"I know," he said nodding, surprised by the fast change in her emotions "But can you just answer this one more before we go?"

"Kay" she replied

"Well I was just wondering, but you know before, when you and Fang were talking over near the bus stop?"

"Yeah"

"What was the name that Fang stoped you from saying, and why didn't she want you to say it?" he questioned.

"Why do you ask?"

"Just curious" he responded

A smile flashed across Nataliah's face in that moment, but it was unmistakably a sad one. Taking her time, she slowly leaned in closer to Travis and began "Well, for starters I never told you this, other than that all I can say is that its long story and I don't know most of it, but the name, it was Lightning."

* * *

><p><em>And that's the first chapter, hope you liked it.<em>

_Just saying but I think quite a bit of aussie slang is sneeking in to this, not nessarily in this chapter, but in others. Through I guess that's what you get growing up on Australia, its gets so ingrained into the way you speak that in the end you don't even notice it._

_Anyway please review, do so and I'll give you a cookie._


	2. a long day

_Yays, I got this to reach 3000 words. (My sister seems a little obsessed with the amount of words per chapter)_

_First things first I need to say is that while it's in Fangs POV, she calls Serah by her real name unless speaking out loud, unless of course she's speaking to someone like Nataliah. While everyone at the school calls Fang Atla._

_You know the odd thing about that name is that the name came before the meaning, it was a fake name fang was using in a dream of mine, I just gave it that meaning for the story._

_Oh and just saying but this chapter is full of insults to popular people, I'm someone who gets bullied by them so doing that kind of thing is fun, and since the popular people at my school are really dumb it's fun to insult them._

_Anyway enjoy the chapter._

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.**_

* * *

><p><strong><em>A Long Day<em>**

Fang sighed for what would have been the millionth time in the pass few hours, when she had said she thought that today would be a long day, she'd meant it. In fact, if anything that had been an understatement, considering that the still hypo Lebreau was clinging to her arm, and one of the strictest teachers in this school had been a substitute for her first period class and had put her on detention for accidentally dropping a pencil.

Couldn't help but think that she was out for her for some reason.

But in a way what topped this all off was being pestered by those annoying pest of people that are dubbed by the stupidity of high schoolers as popular all day. They didn't have any good reason for doing so, it all seemed to link up with the fact that for reasons unknown to her and the world of logic, Serah was bullied pretty bad here and they gave her the worst of it.

But as bad as it was, it was actually how she'd got into Serah's group of friends in the first place, it would always elude her to how Serah had made all those close friends so fast but that wasn't of any importance right now. Her 'friendship' with Serah and her friends had come about when one of Serah's worst bullies had tried to punch her in the face only to be smashed into the wall opposite him by a well-aimed kick by Fangs right leg. Ever since than Serah always seemed to like to keep her close, seeing as the entirety of the school were made effectively petrified of her because of that one instance.

Another consequence of that incident was her getting detention for two months straight, mostly because the teachers firmly didn't believe her she'd did it on instinct, that and because the poor boy she kicked had broken his nose and jaw when he hit wall. Still, Fang couldn't help but think that he'd have gotten worse if she'd kicked him with her other leg.

Fang's trance was broken suddenly when she felt Lebreau tugging on her dress, and her attention was brought back to the present. Looking to the side she made to look at Lebreau, only to find that the girl was nowhere to be seen until she lowered her eyes to see the girls form sitting on the ground. Ignoring the what the fuck moment over why and since when the girl was on the floor, Fang snapped at her "What, quit tugging my dress."

Letting go, Lebreau pulled away and started giggling incessantly. Rolling her eyes at the girl, Fang couldn't help but think that out of all the annoying about things that Serah's friends, how Lebreau went phyco when she had coffee had to be the worst of them. It ticked Fang off to no end, but of course, it wasn't like she could do much about it, as long as she was here she had to be the good little girl and not draw attention to herself like the sort a mind-snap certainly would. Here she had to keep up the façade that she was just a normal student and nothing more.

Snapping out of the trance that had overtaken her mind again for that short time, Fang took note that Lebreau was still sitting on the ground, and that approaching them both were god's unholy torture, the popular people. That would be why Lebreau had been tugging on her skirt Fang soon realised.

Inwardly groaning, Fang resisted the urge to face palm at the appearance of the pack of idiots, they were unquestionably what her already irritated self didn't need right now, but she was hit once again with the fact that killing them to liberate her of their pestilence was out of the question. So she was left with other option to bare it and wait til it past.

Sternly reminding herself not to slip up and call Serah by her real name in the conversation to come, Fang made sure to put on her 'I'm going to kill you in two seconds flat if you don't scram now' face, and she let a rather convincing but faked smile grace her features. It had the exact response Fang had wanted; the people in front of her look like they were just about to piss their pants.

"Well, well what do we have here, why have you all honoured me with your presence." Fang said making sure each word was drowned in utter sarcasm.

All the girls in the semi-large group smiled at her, which was not a good sign for Fang, after a moment or two, one of them stepped out from their ranks; a girl with a happy cheery smile plastered on her face that was so gleeful that it made Fang want to rip off her mouth just to destroy it, held her hand out to Fang.

"We're come to offer you an offer Atla." she spoke up.

"And what would that be, unholy demon dog sent from hell to eat me alive." Fang answered her, causing the girl to pull a face that was rather hilarious in her opinion; face it, the girl just couldn't pull off a scowl if her life depended on it. Biting down on her lip hard, the girl fought to keep her emotions in check, and not overly recovering from Fang's comment the girl continued on from where she left off.

"We've come here to give you the offer of joining us; a pretty girl like yourself doesn't deserve to have her reputation pulled down by hanging out with the weird kids."

It took all of Fangs power not to smash her head into the nearest wall hard enough to give her permanent brain damage. If they thought that Serah and the NORA crew were strange then they hadn't seen anything yet. Given, Serah was a bit stranger than most people out there, but at least she wasn't constantly saying that she wanted to dye her hair green anymore like she had before her memory was erased. And no one this stupid girl in front of her had met would ever hold a candle to the freaks and nutcases that inhabited Fangs world

Still fighting that tremendously enticing urge to hit her head against the wall, Fang made sure to answer the group in a way that she knew would piss them off "You have to be some of the thickest people I have ever met." holding up a finger to stop them from responding with the words she saw forming at their lips, Fang continued "Ignoring that on my first day here I nearly kicked one of your own through a wall, this entire conversation has been filled with insults directed to you, and any other person would have figured out by now that I hate you all, so I'm going to have to reject your offer, because when it comes down to it, it is just so untempting it isn't funny. I've been legitimately more tempted to go hit my head against a wall this entire time."

Fang watched on as the faces of the kids ahead of her distorted into angry masses of red at her words, all of them realizing that this wasn't going to work anytime soon. Some of them moved to speak in the seconds that followed afterwards but Fang beat them to, this time her voice turning venomous "And don't ever think of me like I'm as dumb as you lot, I know that you simply want to get me away from Topaz so you can bully her." the look Fang was giving them all turned pure evil as she spoke the words "But mind telling me one thing since your here, why on earth do you bully such a wonderful girl like her, wouldn't happen to be because she's prettier than the lot of you pigs?"

The effects were instantaneous, the girls of the group making the transition from annoyed to furious within the space of milliseconds and they all started screeching words of hate at Fang.

"Yeah right! How in the world could you imagine we'd be jealous of that pig?!"

"Yeah don't be stupid!" they all screamed.

Fang rolled her eyes at them, the girls she saw before her weren't beautiful, they couldn't even be called pretty, they were plain, makeup covered whores. During the period of screaming the boys in the group had done the smart thing and backed away, and Fang had to admit to herself that at least they seemed to have a strip of smartness in them.

They had learned early that Fang wasn't one to piss off, the girls on the other hand had constantly pestered her again and again, never learning their lesson. Funny, but you'd think a score of black eyes and a score and half of detentions they'd suffered through with Fang would do that.

"Dumbasses" Fang muttered under her breath, she had a pretty strong feeling that they were about to go over the line with this.

They'd grouped together and started whispering among themselves, probably thinking up a way to insult Fang without her tearing said insult to pieces.

Breaking apart, the girls looked back up at Fang and looked her in the eye. Stepping forward some, one of the girls said with a smile on her face. "You know what, you probably only hang out with Topaz cause your les for her."

'Couldn't they have come up with a better insult, that had to be one of the worst I'd heard all day' Fang thought, as she answered the girl without having to put much time into formulating her response. "Wasn't there anything better you could think of to say, apart from how Topaz has to be one of the most obviously straight person I've ever met, my liking of fucking girls is not an insult."

Oh how Fang wished she had a camera on her when she saw the looks they threw her way at the contents of the end of her sentence.

To the side of her, Lebreau failed to hold in a laugh and started cackling wildly at the group stunned faces, it wasn't like she was privy to what Fang had just told them but this was just too good an opportunity to pass up. Her mind making sure to take am metal picture of the image before her.

"Come on." Fang said to her as she turned on her heel and began treading in the opposite direction "let's get out of here before they recover."

Striding away from the teenagers Fang and Lebreau walked down the deserted halls with a certain destination in mind, a hidden area at the top of the school that the teachers allowed only them to stay at as it was meant to be out of bounds, so other students wouldn't bother them there, it would be there that they knew they would find the others.

Sliding up to her so that she could walk by her side, Lebreau fell into step alongside Fang. After a couple of moments where no one spoke, Lebreau reached up and whispered in Fangs ear "They'll never let you live that down you know."

Fang didn't need to be told that twice, of course she knew that they would hold on to her words and try their best to use it against her, had before she'd said them. "Any pacific reason why I should care."

"You have a point there, but can I ask you one question through?" Lebreau inquired.

"Yeah"

"Are you seriously a lesbian?"

"Who says I am, I've just found from experience that when someone accuses you of being lesbian or gay, they go away faster if you go along with it instead denying it." Fang answered her.

Humming as she took in Fang's reply, Lebreau let a silence form between them for a time. Eventually thought she broke it by telling Fang "You know what through?" she said a small chuckle in her voice.

"Yeah?" Fang responded

"Don't you wish you could have taken a picture of them looking at you like that, it kinda just made me think 'Damn it Lebreau if only you had a camera on you'."

"If only Lebreau, if only." Fang replied to her comment, secretly not all that caring of it

Turning a corner they came a upon a door that led outside the building, and walking out of it the pair made their way towards the top of the school to a circle of trees that hid what lay inside it from view. Walking up to the trees Fang and Lebreau slipped in between the thick trunks and greeted the people inside.

Looking around the group and taking note of who were there, Fang turned to topaz and asked her asked "Where's Snow and Gadot?"

Glancing up from her food, she shrugged and said "My moneys on detention."

Now why did she think that Maqui and Yuj were actually betting with her on this?

Sitting down on the grass, Fang unslung her bad from her shoulders and pulled out what she had to eat. Thinking back a bit, but she'd always hated school, it didn't matter that she had never spent all that much time there. she'd never really gotten the chance to, her life hadn't exactly wanted to be normal, or provide a happy childhood for that matter, face it the death of her parents and getting painfully caught up in the war between pulse and cocoon didn't really give you one.

Snapping out of what she was sure was her millionth trance that day; Fang saw that, though it was beyond her why, that Serah and Yuj had begun to play a game of poker.

What the hell? They even had chips.

Crawling a bit closer to them she laid down on her stomach, resting her head on her hands , playing spectator to the game for a while until she asked "Where exactly did you get all this?"

"Yuj brought them to school." Serah answered quickly, with an air about her that it was the most normal thing in the world.

"And why dear Topaz did he do that?" Fang probed.

She shrugged, answering "Bored I guess."

From then on recess passed without many goings-on for a certain amount of time, that is until Snow and Gadot arrived on the scene. Getting up from the ground and greeting the two boys, Serah gave Snow a little hug and questioned "Where have you two been?"

Snow scratched the back of his head, answering "Mrs Kathina's detention actually"

Just the words Serah had been waiting for and she out of the blue shouted "Yes, you owe me twenty bucks Yuj!"

Had Fang been any other person she would have laughed at that, it was just as she thought, they had been betting. Flicking her gaze to Snow and Gadot she told them with faked humour in her voice

"She's got me in for lunch; I dropped a pencil and bam, detention, that damn teachers got it out for me I tell you."

"A pencil? You serious?" Snow said with disbelief clear in the words.

"Yep, just a pencil." Fang reaffirmed.

Snow shook his head bewilderment; he'd heard a few bizarre reasons for Kathina to give out detentions, but none quite so out there as simply dropping a pencil. Ending the conversation, Snow and Gadot moved to sit on the grass, taking out their lunch as Serah and Yuj resumed their poker game.

By the time the bell rang Serah had practically decimated Yuj in poker and Snow and Gadot were 15 to 12 in an arm wrestling competition, and Fang had spent the majority of lunch listening to Lebreau almost constant rambling as she gone and bought the inhumane torture, at least when in her hands, ice coffee, at the canteen after snow and Gadot had arrived.

Groaning Fang slowly got up and tried to slink away without Lebreau following her, cursing the fact that they shared nearly all their classes. She said a quick goodbye to Serah, Snow, Maqui and Yuj while Gadot distracted Lebreau, and Fang snuck out of the area silently without being followed.

Gotta admit, Fang thought to herself, while she didn't overly view them that highly, they'd been good enough friends to her to know to distract Lebreau without even asking them. Even if she'd still had to sit through an hour of class with her next period, but it being last class of the day that made up for that mostly.

It was then of course that she remembered that after this she'd have to deal with Nataliah.

Being frank, Nataliah wasn't that bad, but she was a chatterbox when she wanted to be, which Fang was a polar opposite of in every way perceivable, so she preferred to keep Nataliah at arm's length when needs be.

Pausing to remember which class she had next, Fang started her way towards the science classrooms, to say she was looking forward to the next class would be a downright lie. science when it came to it was anything but one of her favourite subjects, in a school like this and outside of it.

Stopping outside the classroom, Fang halted her pace and waited beside the door as the class's students accumulated around her and the dread of the time when Lebreau would inevitably turn up rose up in her chest. Unfortunately for her, that time came all too soon, and the form of Lebreau skipping down the hall towards her soon appeared before her.

Stopping right by Fang, the hypo Lebreau poked her in the shoulder playfully, complaining "Hey Atla, why didn't you wait for me?"

Fang bit back a groan of annoyance, loathing how it was always her who had to spend the day with Lebreau.

"Sorry." Fang muttered in apology, of course truth be told she wasn't at all sorry but Lebreau wouldn't notice that.

Humming softly, Lebreau wrapping arms around on of Fang's, reinstated her position of obsessively clinging to her and said cheerily "Okay apology accepted."

Soon after that the teacher came and everyone present walked inside the room and took their seats, the teacher eying Lebreau warily throughout this. Fang guessed he noticed that she wasn't quite sane right now and knowing all too well what Lebreau was like after she'd drank ice coffee, he had every right to be.

The lesson that followed was boring, maybe not to some of the other students but to Fang it was. She loathed science, as well as this school for that matter and if it wasn't Serah she was protecting here she would have never put a foot near the place

In her boredom her mind wondered to something their teacher had told them in one of their previous lessons, first off and what was now common knowledge to the students of this class, the teacher was a disaster master in every meaning of the word. He'd told them on this particular lesson that had taken her mind from the current of the multiple bones he'd sprained, twisted and broken. Two of which included breaking his leg while playing ultimate Frisbee and yes that's apparently possible, seeing as if you get your foot caught in a sprinkler while running your body doesn't always agree with stopping. And the easily worse of the two, when he'd gotten into a car accident and gone head first into a ditch, cracking his skull on impact, put him into a coma that one did.

Disaster master indeed.

Fang thanked the gods when the bell finally tolled out across the school, signalling the end of the school day. Groaning quietly she got up from her seat and left the room with Lebreau following her.

Sliding up beside Fang as she strode away from the classroom, Lebreau asked "Hey Atla, can you come out with us after school?"

Fangs reply was quick and short "Sorry, can'.t"

"Aww, why not?" the girl whined.

"I'm busy."

"But you're always busy."she retorted

"So I noticed" Fang said back, not overly affected by anything being said to her.

"How come? what do you have to do that so important?" Lebreau questioned her a little peeved.

"Work." it wasn't the biggest lie, she'd probably get this afternoon off but her line of work she always had to be ready for anything that could happen, so leisure time was out of the question.

Sighing in defeat, Lebreau patted Fang on the shoulder, the next words she chose to say dripping in unfitting seriousness "Can I kill your work?

"Love you to." Fang muttered quietly, refraining from saying the rest her mind wished to say about how she'd probably get killed in the processes if she tried.

Saying goodbye to Lebreau at the gates Fang made her way over to the black car waiting for her stationary in the car park. Opening the door and climbing inside, she found Nataliah sitting by the left window; she also noticed how the driver, still Travis was visibly a lot tenser then he had been in the morning.

Glancing up at him curiously, she asked Nataliah "Just wondering, but what exactly have you been telling him to make him so tense?"

"Oh, just filling him in on some things." Nataliah replied nonchalantly.

"Heh, like that narrows it down." Fang grumbled, taking her seat by Nataliah.

Shrugging off the reply, Nataliah questioned the women beside her "Are they going anywhere after this?"

Fang nodded "Yeah, down to a café"

Nataliah pouted "Aww, I wanted to go home."

"Not my problem."

Nataliah huffed and told Travis to get going, leaning back in her seat only for seconds before lurching forward "Oh wait I just remembered!" she exclaimed, reaching into her pockets and taking out a piece of paper mumbling "How'd I forget this?"

Noticeably hesitating handing them to Fang, she clamped her hands about them, her eyes transfixed to their white expanse dotted with black.

"Pulse got their hands on some of cocoons records today; they were a little dated but still useful" she informed Fang, handing them over somewhat tentatively to the women whose eyes widened when she saw what was written upon them.

"I found those among them, I thought you might want to see them." Nataliah finished, a little unsure of herself.

Meanwhile Fangs eyes scanned over the page in her hand, she couldn't believe what she held in her hands. The paperwork was at least six years old but it told her what she'd wanted to know for so long, even if it wasn't good news.

Cocoon agent: 66578, Oerba Dia Vanille, MIA.

* * *

><p>Heh heh heh, I love the ending of this chapter.<p>

Also I do believe that my science teacher Mr Webb snuck into the story, all those disaster master things I wrote actually happened to him (In the car accident I believe he'd been riding a bike and had nicked a car) He also managed to split his head open after living in a new house for only two weeks, how fun.

Please, review and Ill give you chocolate


	3. lost in memories

Finally, this chapter took me a million years to write, through that may have someting to do with the fact that it's nearly 11 thousand words (I have no idea how in the world it got that long)

I also got really bad writers block through some parts of it and my dad's USB decided to go into non existence so this story got trapped in my school laptop that has a firewall on fanfiction (I'm currently hyjacking both my friends laptop and her USB)

Originally I was gonna tell you that I doubted you'd be getting another one this long for a long time but then I reliased that I love long chapters and have an inability to write short stories, so as this story progresses I think you might actually be getting quite a few chapters like this one.

If you don't notice it, through you probably will, I'm trying to make all the Vanille fans out there to go and kill Rosch (This is a flashback chapter, so she'd be in it). I'm aware that what I just said is techically physically impossible.

One last thing, I need to tell you that my friend, whose stories I apparently have to promote has changed her name to Oerbayunfang.

Well that's that I guess, so on to the story.

**_DISCLAIMER: I do not own Final Fantasy, if I did I would be a hell of a lot richer that I am._**

* * *

><p><strong><em>Lost in memories<em>**

Laying wide awake, Fang rested on her bed well resigned to the knowledge that any sleep that found her tonight wouldn't be restful. Crawling into a ball and wrapping her arms tightly around her leg she sighed. It seemed that no matter how many years passed the memories refused to blur, leaving every second of them clear in her mind.

"Vanille" she breathed into the silent room.

Tears formed on the rims of her eyes but she tried her best to keep them from falling. Tightening her hold on her leg, memories of the angelic girl engulfed her. Her 'sister', one of the few people in the world that she had truly trusted, long gone but sorely missed.

And oh goddess and how she missed her.

Losing her hopeless fight with the tears that threated to fall, they began to flow down her cheeks in a steady flow and she sobbed into her pillow, knowing all too well what MIA meant when it came to cocoon. Its agents were taught to kill themselves if ever caught by the enemy or whenever they were in circumstances that played against the corporation. Fang had lost many close friends such circumstances. So it was simple, cocoons agents didn't go MIA, they went KIA, the only way for one of their agents to be labelled as MIA was if they had fallen to occurrences made by cocoon themselves. Namely, if an agent had spoken out against the corporation, to cocoon, that registered enough reason for punishment of the severest measures. Cocoon would never stand for agents they thought untrustworthy, it was the reason that the success rate of a defection was so low. They were nigh impossible to even think of doing let alone achieving ; it was serve them or die, that or the torture chamber.

A shiver ran down Fang's spine at the thought of that place, making her clutch her left leg absentmindedly. That place had been hell on earth and as much as the thought hurt her, she would of rather Vanille die than ever step foot in that place. Releasing the tight hold of left leg, she stretched both legs out and rolled onto her back, the moonlight flowing in from the window making shadows play across her face.

Despite knowing that a good sleep was a highly unlikely possibility for her tonight, Fang closed her eyes and decided to risk it. It was a long time before anything that resembled sleep over took her and when it did it was filled with memories.

Memories of herself, of Vanille, their life before Cocoon and their life with it.

...:...

Fang woke up to the sound of agonised screams coming from outside her window. lurching into a sitting position on her bed she was suddenly hit with the repugnant scent of smoke wafting in from the window and it became all too clear to her what the cause of the screaming was.

Jumping out of bed she ran to the bed adjacent to her own and shook the younger girl who slept in it awake. "Vanille! Vanille! Wake up there's a fire, you need to get up!" she said urgently, trying to keep the fear she felt out of her voice.

"Fang?" a small voice questioned.

"Yeah it's me, now you need to get up, please."

"Why." the tired voice continued to question.

"I already told you, there's a fire we need to get out of here." Fang reinstated with urgency.

Sleepily climbing out of the bed the small girl moved around the room groggily, before questioning the older girl "Where's Lissa?" referring to one of the care takers in the orphanage.

"I don't know." Fang answered truthfully hurrying the young girl out of the room.

Nodding, Vanille followed Fang through the buildings hallway and down flights of stairs in direction the door that would lead them outside. Landing at the bottom of the last flight of stairs, the two came into the very first room of the house where a pair of double doors stood marking the entrance. Moving towards it Fang halted before it, clasping both of the metal handles in her hands and pushing on them with all her might, swinging them both outwards. Not in any ways a small task for someone no older than five.

What met their sights beyond the opened doors was not one that they had imagined in their wildest nightmares.

Their village was on fire, houses alight, with flames decorating their roofs, eating their way in to the interiors, paths blocked by blazing wood that had broken off from decimated houses and on to the roads. The village in its entirety was burning to the ground before their very eyes.

A terrified scream tore itself from Vanille's throat but Fang didn't move to make a single sound, holding on to silence as her eyes scanned over the monstrous inferno in shock. Never before had she seen anything so horrific in her life, she wished she would never have to.

Recovering a sufficient amount so that she was able to compose herself to a degree, Vanille grabbed onto on Fang's nightgown and tugged on it so as to draw the attention of the older girl away from the fire "Fang, Fang what happened?" the little girl questioned, scared out of her mind of the situation they'd been caught up in.

Snapping out of the shocked daze that had her eyes locked onto the flames that were drawing ever closer, Fang felt her Vanille's hand, telling her in an overwrought voice while she begun to pull her along with her away from the orphanage "I don't know."

She didn't have an inkling as to what had happened here, the chance of a fire starting when she had gone to sleep that night had been nigh improbable, the weather was cold and it wasn't even near fire season. The only sure thing she knew at the moment was that she had to get Vanille and herself out of the place and fast.

Moving past burning building after burning building Fang's eyes searched around for any living soul, but she had no such luck. She couldn't discern anybody or anything in the inferno, only the villagers screams reached her ears but she was too scared to approach the deteriorating buildings to see if there were people inside who clung onto life despite the dire circumstances

Fang passed the homes of her friends only to find them deathly silent and still, a sight that brought on a terrified whimper out of Vanille. Wrapping her arm around the small girl, she held her close. Feeling genuinely sorry for her, three years olds where not meant to witness things like this, but then how was she much different.

Looking back on this night years from now, Fang would realise that they had slipped through the fire with so much ease for a reason, one she would take many years for her see in clear light.

Reaching the end of the rows of houses, Fang and Vanille made their way to the top of a hill that overlooked the town. Once at the top, the two girls turned to face their home, watching as the fires continued to lay waste to what had been up to tonight a flourishing village

"Fang?" Vanille piped up.

"Hm." Fang sounded, tilting her head to look into Vanille's face.

"Where everyone?" the younger girl questioned her, utterly naïve of the answer.

Problem was, Fang wasn't, she knew all too well where everyone was, they were still in those houses, burning to death if the fire hadn't already put an end to them. Shaking her head she pulled Vanille further away from the sight and answered with a lie "I don't know."

They took shelter that night a while away from the village in an old abandoned hut that stood by a smooth flowing river. Fang laid the tired Vanille on a bed that sat in the corner of the cramped room before falling to the floor herself. After what she'd just seen she wasn't too sure if she'd be sleeping tonight.

Leaning her back against the bed Fang thanked the goddess that Vanille had fallen asleep the moment her head had hit the pillow as there was no way in heaven and hell that she'd ever want to let the kid see the tears that she'd cry tonight. Lifting her hands to her head she cradled it in her palms; gaze transfixed to the floor with eyes wide open. tears slid down her face in pairs and hit the floor beneath her, making splash marks on the aging wood.

It was a long time til her tears began to cease, but when they did, Fang took her hands away from her head and raised her gaze from the floor to the thatched roof. There wasn't thing she could do, she knew that, was had happened had happened, there was no changing it. But no matter how many times Fang told herself that tears were useless, there were always some threatening to fall over the boundary of her eyes.

Suppressing a whimper, Fang crawled into a ball, thinking dreadful thoughts she didn't want to think.

Her friends were dead, their families along with them, how many more had died alongside them? Had any others gotten out alive like her and Vanille?

Tears repeatedly threatened to fall but she refused to let them, she had to be strong now, she couldn't let Vanille see her like this.

Laying down and resting her head on the hard floor Fang let herself fall into a fitful sleep, one that was filled the first of many nightmares that would stalk sleeping hours for many years to come.

...:...

When Fang awoke, it was to the sound of unfamiliar voices emanating from outside the hut. Lifting her body, that had grown stiff and slightly sore from sleeping upon the hard floor, up off the ground she walked to the window and peered outside.

There were people there, weird looking people who were dressed in funny looking garments, or at least as Fang perceived them.

They didn't resemble the people who of her village, there were so many differences that Fang could spot just by examining at them for this short amount of time, though of course her people were tribesman. Isolated from the rest of the world by a vast ocean; so that the people that inhabited her island weren't like the rest of the world. Others had told Fang stories of the advanced civilisations in which people lived beyond her island, but these were thing her people had no interest in; they preferred and enjoyed the simple life they lived here in Oerba.

Gazing back towards the people outside the window Fang tried to listen in on what they were saying but found herself blocked by a language barrier, the words being spoken were unintelligible to her. Watching the men's conversation come to an end Fang saw that they were heading towards the hut in which her and Vanille sheltered.

Not knowing whether to be wary of them or not, Fang crept over to where Vanille lay sleeping and shook her awake, warning her "Villy there are strange men over there."

Opening her eyes sleepily in response to Fang's voice, Vanille sat up slowly and questioned her "Wah?"

Before Fang could form an answer though the men had already opened the door with a resounding creak and entered the small hut. Speaking among themselves in that same language that Fang couldn't make head nor tail of, a solitary person broke away from the group and took a couple of steps towards her and Vanille.

Fang saw that the person in question was a girl, she was young too, maybe only ten years her senior and beautiful in her own opinion, with golden brown hair and dark eyes. Coming close enough so that she could kneel down before Fang, the young girl spoke to Fang in her own Oerban tongue.

"Hey little girl." she said before gesturing to the area outside the window "Did you come from the village other there?"

Nodding slowly Fang pulled a quizzical face, but the girl ignored it and continued on "What's your name?"

"Fang." she answered slowly still unsure whether trusting these people was a good idea.

"Mine's Jihl." the girl replied back, flashing Fang a quick smile that revealed her shockingly white teeth "What about the girl behind you?" she added on with a gesture to Vanille.

"She's Vanille." Fang informed her.

"What a pretty name" Jihl mused as she got up off the ground and walked back so that she came to stand with the group of men again. Twisting around so that she faced the small girls she announced to the two of them "We're from the corporation of Cocoon."

In the years after this moment, Fang would come to realise that telling those people their names had been the worst thing she'd ever done.

...:...

_**Three years later**_

The gun fell from Fang's hands in exhaustion and she fell to her knees, no longer having the strength to hold her body up, only for a man by her side to yell at her to stand back up and pick up the gun. Breathing out harshly, and biting back the retort she felt at the edge of her lips, Fang she willed herself bring herself back to her feet and reach for the gun that lay on the ground no too far from her and raise it to face the target in front of her.

The three years since Cocoon had picked up both her and Vanille up could described as nothing but hell, they'd been brought across the wide ocean that had separated Oerba from the rest of the world, taught English and had been trained to use a number of firearms, bladed weapons and more. They were told that they were to become agents of cocoon and in a nutshell that meant that they were to become two of the many people who worked in the shadows to do Cocoon's dirty work. Fang hated the thought of it, she had never liked cocoon for taking them away from Oerba, true it was not like they had anything left for them there, with the village in ruins and everyone they knew killed in the inferno, but Oerba was a place so special to her that it couldn't be described in words and it'd been so much nicer than the place Cocoon had brought them.

The mere action of bringing them here left Fang mistrustful of them; she had no idea why cocoon had been there in the first place and why they even bothered in taking her and Vanille with them. Their excuses never satisfied her like they did Vanille, Fang thought as she levelled her tired arms up with the target and shot off a round of bullets.

Slowly releasing a breath, her mind succumbed to the thought that at least this got her away from school. She found it odd, but it was beyond her how she could loathe school so much when she hadn't even spent a year there and had lived in a tribal village so what passed for school there didn't exactly resemble the system that every kid would passed through in this country.

She thanked the goddess when the man observing her training told her that she'd done enough for today and let her stop. Breathing out a sign of relief, Fang handed the gun that had been emptied of bullets to him and forced her fatigued body keep from giving out on her so that it could at least get her out of the room. They'd worked her to the bone today and she was practically ready to drop to the ground, something she did indeed proceed to do when she reached her room and closed the door behind her.

"Finally." Fang breathed out from her position on the floor.

The action caught the attention of a slight figure that lay stretched out on Fang's bed, and sitting up so that she could spy Fang on the floor Vanille exclaimed "Fang!" as she jumped off the bed and ran over to the girl who still lay on the ground by the door. Not ready for the hug Vanille engulfed her with, Fang jumped startled as Vanille wrapped her arms around her before returning the gesture.

"Hey." she said weakly "How long you been here?"

"Since I finished training an hour ago."

"An hour ago." Fang complained, once more spoken in that tired sounding voice "You even started training two hours after to me, why do you get it easier than me, I feel like I'm about to drop dead."

"Don't complain Fang I'm two years younger than you, they can't push me like they do you."

"Ahh." Fang breathed into the air "I'm gonna go to sleep kay." she stated suddenly.

"Umhmm, kay." Vanille said letting go of her friend, shyly letting her eyes fall to the floor for a second before questioning "Um, Fang?"

"Yeah." Fang muttered sleepily"

"Can I sleep here tonight?"

"What? Why?" Fang asked, curious.

"No reason." Vanille answered quietly.

"You're aware that means it's something." Fang informed her as pushed her tired self off the hard floor and walked at a slow pace towards the bed in the centre of the room.

Despite her last sentence, Fang knew all too well that Vanille wasn't going to tell her why she didn't want to leave her room. Moving over to lie on her bed she told Vanille "Sure but don't wake me up"

Nodding Vanille jumped up on Fang's bed with her and snuggled in closer to Fang, soon falling asleep next to the older girl.

Much like with their names, Fang would come to regret never making Vanille tell her what had been bothering her that night, and for the many similar nights to come.

...:...

_**Two years later**_

Creeping across the hall darkened by nights limited resources of light and sticking to the wall and its many shadows, Fang crept ever closer to her goal.

She had been ordered by cocoon to kill a Pulsian agent who had put a cork in their plots one too many times for his own good lately. He was code named Jackson and over the past few months he'd become a household name to the corporation of cocoon, all for the wrong reasons. Fang herself had come face to face with the man twice before she'd been ordered with this mission; he was a man many years older than her, in his twenties if Fang guessed right. 'Jackson' though , the first time he'd lied eyes on her had made the almost fatal mistake of viewing her as nothing but a little girl, a mistake that had cost many, many people their lives before him.

At no older than ten years of age, Fang was a highly trained Cocoon agent skilled in the art of murder; she was a prodigy among her fellow agents and not one to be underestimated. Needless to say, the next time Jackson met her he hadn't taken her so lightly.

But this time luck was not on his side, an agent of cocoon had badly injured him in the field and he had been subsequently bedridden due to his severe injuries. All she had to do was sneak into his room and slit his throat. A task not as easy said as done, as Pulse's agents had surveillance on them 24-7 when inside Pulsian safe houses.

Especially the good agents.

Making sure to keep control of her breathing in this hostile environment, Fang's mind kept its attention on how if she stuffed this up she certainly wasn't coming out of it unscathed, so she needed to concentrate.

Keeping to the wall Fang reached a corner and peered around it cautiously. Scanning over what was visible; Fang sought out any human activity in the area. Seeing that the coast was clear she tiptoed forward and on to the next hallway.

Fang's time in the safe house went on like that for a while before it's mundaneness was interrupted by the appearance of an unmarked door, and having memorised the layout of this building from a map a Cocoon spy had supplied her with before setting off on this mission, Fang knew that the contents of the room was an electronics system that was a master control of many of the security cameras in the decorated this place, though not all of them. So even if she turned off the cameras that could be controlled through this room she still had to be careful.

Opening the door silently, the man that sat on a chair inside the room observing the cameras didn't notice her until it was too late, and in seconds his throat bore a deep cut that would soon end his life. Hiding him as best as she could in the corner, Fang walked up to the equipment laid out on the desk. Very carefully choosing specific camera's she turned them off. Without the hindrance of these cameras it would be indefinitely easier to move through the safe house and get into Jacksons room.

All that was left was to take care of now were guards and stray agents in the hallways, but they were nothing but small fry.

Stepping back into the cold hall walls once more, Fang trod ever closer to Jackson's room, with anyone who tried to bare her way quickly struck down by her trusty knife and left in the dust. It was all too soon that Fang found herself in front of her victim-to-be's door. Picking the locks that decorated the door's surface were a cinch compared to what it'd took to get here and soon enough all the locks clicked open.

Entering the silent room, Fang closed the door behind her and approached the man on the bed. He was a sad sight compared to what she'd seen of him before this moment.

His left arm was broken and he had a number of bruises and lacerations trailing down his body on all sides, she smiled to herself at the sight of him knowing all too well who would have caused him these injures.

"Nabaat." she whispered to herself.

Fang had seen similar injuries to Jackson's on many of her victims and prisoners she'd captured. Coming to stand at the foot of Jackson's bed, the man startled her by speaking to her though she'd thought him asleep.

"It's nice to see you again little girl." he rasped.

Failing to keep herself from gasping, Fang bit her lip to bring her emotions under check and raised her eyes to meet his own, telling him "Can't say the same about you."

"Heh figured as much, that Nabaat though, she is gifted with weaponry, she's a person I had wished never to find myself fighting." he mused.

"Looks like you failed at that."

"Guess so." he replied.

Tightly griping the handle of the knife she held in her hands Fang walked to the side of his bed so that she stood by his head.

Raising the knife so as to cut His throat Fang was made to halt her attempt by a question.

"Why do you work for cocoon girl?" Jackson asked her, a strange sense of curiosity melding in with his meek voice.

"Huh."

"Why do you work for them?" Jackson questioned her again.

"I don't know." Fang answered him in all truth. Because when it got down to it; that was a question she'd been asking herself for years, only to always come up with no answer.

The man in the bed raised his eyebrow at that "How come." he probed.

She shrugged "They picked me and my friend up five years ago, after our village burned down, we're worked for them ever since."

Half closing his eyes he lifted them to the ceiling "That so."

Raising the knife again Fang laid the blade against Jackson's neck.

"What's your name girl, I wish to know the name of my killer." he said suddenly.

Contemplating whether or not to tell him Fang decided on saying "My name's Fang."

"Hm." was the only sound she got out of him.

Applying more pressure to the knife Jackson uttered his last words "You know Fang, Cocoon were probably the ones who burned down your village."

That was the night Fang started to hate Cocoon to the core.

...:...

_**Three years later**_

Holding one hand out to help up the girl on the ground, Fang pulled Vanille up and onto her feet.

Dusting herself off Vanille apologised "Sorry bout that Fang."

"It's okay villy." Fang responded.

Standing up straight, Vanille followed along behind Fang through the halls of the main building; they had been called here urgently to fulfil a mission that was important to the safety of Cocoon. A single Pulsian agent had broken into the headquarters in the early hours of the morning and stolen highly important documents that held information on Cocoon that they had to stop Pulse getting no matter what the costs.

So to put simply, Fang and Vanille had been ordered to assassinate the agent and anyone who'd got their hands on said documents.

Despite the corner the agent had pushed Cocoon into Fang couldn't help but admire them, whoever they were, for what they'd done. Breaking into a cocoon headquarters where they knew full well that they'll be killed on sight, took guts, a lot of guts.

Walking through threshold of the briefing room, both girls stepped inside and greeted who they found within "Why hello you two." Fang said cheekily earning a frown from Rosch who crossed arms and looked as if he was about to tell her off , but was denied the chance by Nabaat.

"Don't let her get to you Yaag, she's just being herself."

"Yes Yaag dear listen to your wife." Fang teased, making sure to apply the smirk that she knew made his blood boil every time he sighted it.

"That's enough Fang, I'd stop before you truly get on his bad side." Nabaat snapped, though Fang had a strong feeling she'd done so just because she didn't like being called Rosch's wife.

Fang held her silence after that and let Nabaat fill them in on the details of the mission to come. As the minutes ticked by Fang felt Vanille tense up more and more beside her, and she had enough of a brain to know that it had nothing to do with what Nabaat was saying.

Rosch had been eyeing her for minutes on end, Vanille herself was trying to ignore his lingering gaze but such was a failing battle.

Once Nabaat was done with the briefing her eyes flashed venomously to Rosch, though the man never noticed her eye lock onto him, as they were still locked wholly on Vanille. Coughing loudly into the room to get his attention Nabaat glared at him with poison in her gaze.

Rosch though only straightened up and unhooked his eyes from Vanille's form and created an air about him that suggested that nothing had happened. Getting back to business, he turned to face the two girls in front of him he told them.

"Jihl with be coming with you on this mission as well." he informed them "Is there anything you wish to say before you leave?"

Fang nodded "Yeah just one thing."

"Yes." the face he pulled insinuated that he already knew what she was going to say.

"Stop looking at Vanille like you want to fuck her." Fang spat at him viciously. And with that she left the room, making sure to keep Vanille close to her side, and with Nabaat soon following afterwards.

Stopping at the doorway, Nabaat stood still with her back to Rosch, letting Fang and Vanille walk away from the room without her. Laying her hands down on the doorframe she spoke to Rosch one last time before leaving "I'd listen to her if you don't want to get mauled to pieces"

...:...

Luckily for them the agent who had broken into cocoon headquarters hadn't yet returned to their own HQ, they had apparently been injured in the act of escaping and had returned to the nearest safe house, their physical state making the full trip impossible. The documents that had been stolen had been locked inside a safe until executives from Pulse came to pick them up.

So disguised, Fang, Vanille and Jihl snuck into the safe house that housed both the agent and the documents and used information they'd gotten from one of Cocoon's spies to locate where they were both situated.

They crept through the safe house with ease that bordered on unsettling. Moving from wall to wall to elude security camera's that decorated the halls, the girls swept through the corridors silent as humanly possible.

Boredom dominating Fang's mind, she risked the chance of being heard to Speak to Jihl in an effort to make it cease. And of course being herself, it was of the most unrelated topics to their current situation "Hey Jihl, being as bored as I am right now, how is it like being married to you know who?"

Jihl scoffed "Who else but you would ask that sort of thing right now and as you should already know I'm severely tempted to gut that bastard every time I see him, so no, I'm not enjoying being married to him. Why did I have to be forced into that by cocoon in the first place? And better yet why didn't I put up more of a fight to stop them from doing so."

Fang shrugged "You probably realised that it'd be a losing battle straight from the get go, they have too much control over our lives for us to bluntly go against their will. But hey look at the bright side, all they want out of you is for you two to have a baby and to keep up the happily married façade so that people on the outside don't try chasing after Rosch"

"Your just trying to get on my nerves and I know it, you know well enough that it's the baby thing that annoys me the most, fuck that façade bull crap." Jihl snapped at Fang barely raising her voice above a whisper.

"I'm fully aware, but the baby thing does stop cocoon from having to bring in more kids to be trained as agents, babies born to Cocoon agents are trained to be what their parents were."

"That just annoys me more" Jihl told the girl beside her firmly "I don't want any more kids pulled into this, least of all my own."

"Hypocrite." Fang slipped in, a slight piece of emotion mixed in with the word which nature's was unidentifiable.

"Hey, I didn't know how bad cocoon was back when they brought you in; I was only with them for a year before hand." Jihl said in her defence.

"I know, I know, just saying."

Falling distinctly silent for a time long enough to make Fang curious of as to why, Jihl spoke to Fang without making the littlest of effort to turn her head to face her "Um Fang?"

"Yeah?" Fang inquired, still curious.

"I can feel Vanille boring her eyes into my back." Jihl answered monotonously.

Looking backwards to spy the younger girl Fang replied to Jihl, in tone that suggested that she found it humorous "Doesn't like you much don't she?"

Jihl nodded squirming under Vanille's intense gaze "Has quite the glare for an 11 year old don't she?"

"Hm." Fang sounded, suppressing a laugh that would neither do her good when it came to what Jihl would do if she let it out or what would happen if she brought attention to herself in an environment where she was less then welcome.

They continued to move through the safe house with that same ease, which as time passed was becoming more and more eerie. Despite the conversation she held with Jihl, Fang sensed anxiety consuming at her, making her heart beat faster and faster by the minute. The last time she had been in a safe house, there had been a hell of a lot more security than what they faced today.

Coming upon a heavily locked door, Fang sensed that they had located their target, a feeling which was reaffirmed for her by Jihl quietly whispering in her ear "If what our spy's told us is right, that's where the agent is- kill everyone inside."

Nodding Fang closed the distant between herself and the door and picked the locks with infinite skill.

"And you two?" Fang asked her before heading inside.

"We're going to hunt down that safe." Jihl informed her.

Fang nodded again, knowing that she'd been made to go after the agent because despite for them being known for their battle prowess, Jihl especially, both of them were not the best when it came to stomaching killings.

Slipping inside the room Fang kept to the walls, the dim light of the interior concealing her body in darkness. Scanning over the room with her eyes, she counted seven people, eight if you included a person lying unconscious on a bed placed in the middle of the room.

Taking out her gun from a hoister hidden within her jacket, Fang lifted the barrel to meet the men surrounding the bed and fired, taking out all seven before they could even locate her.

Moving forwards to the bed, Fang failed to hold in a gasp at the sight of the agent that lay on upon it. The agent who had broken into the Cocoon headquarters was a young girl, no older than fifteen just like Fang. If the fact that she had broken into cocoon's headquarters singlehandedly had already amazed her then that feeling had just been times tenfold.

Fang couldn't get anywhere close to a Pulsian headquarters, even with all her skill such a feat had been but a dream within a dream.

Raising the gun she levelled it with the girl and aimed it at her head, it would a shame to end the girl's life right here but orders were orders, there was no disobeying them no matter what the circumstances.

In the beginnings of pushing the trigger Fang felt a shape pain tear through her right cheek. Taking a moment to register what had just occurred she saw that in front of her the girl in the bed was wide awake, albeit weak looking and with a knife in her hands. A knife she'd used to rip a deep cut down Fang's cheek.

Fangs hand went to her cut cheek as it flared up in pain. So the girl hadn't been unconscious after all she thought with a smirk "Well hello there sunshine."

"Hn." the girl rasped, hand snapping up to grip a place on her chest where she'd obviously been hurt, it looked like a stab wound to Fang, but she couldn't still be conscious if the wound was that bad could she?

Watching as the girl began to ready the knife again Fang's mind chose a bad time to drift away to focus on certain, others thing about what lay in front of her.

God the girl was was beautiful, with icy blue eyes and blonde-pink hair.

In her trance Fang almost didn't dodge the next swipe the girl sent her way, jumping back she raised her gun again and tried to push she trigger but found herself lacking the will to fulfil the action. As she stalled the girl gave a pained cough that spluttered specs of blood onto the sheet covered and the like on the bed and clutched her chest, obviously in extreme pain.

Observing her, Fang lowered her gun and stared at the girl, she was considerably more hurt than she'd initially thought "Hey you okay?" she asked.

She only received a stare in return.

In what she knew was a bad choice she approached the girl only for in the next instance her right eye to be gone, with a jagged wound trailing up from her right cheek to her eyebrow. Obviously the girl had just been waiting for her to get close enough so she could attack her again.

Clutching her eye Fang bit back a scream, stumbling back from the bed she fell to the ground

"Bitch." she muttered.

The girl on the bed lied back down and her grip on her chest loosened, as obvious as it had been that she was only trying to lure Fang closer, it was also obvious that the pain that she had been feeling wasn't something she'd created for show. Before unconsciousness took her away, she muttered to Fang barely above a whisper "Your own fault."

Clutching her eye, Fang felt hot trails of blood gliding down her face, and thanks to the outright jaggedness of the cut that was its source, it was enormous amount of blood. In no time she felt herself blacking out, struggling to stay conscious Fang failed in keeping her body upright and slowly it sunk to the floor.

The last thing that reached her ears was the sound of the door opening behind her "Shit."

...:...

Waking up hours later Fang saw that she was lying in a bed. Confused, she looked around the room only to be more confused by how she'd come to be back in the Cocoon headquarters "Wah?" she voiced in puzzlement.

From the corner of her eyes, Fang saw a stir of movement from beside the bed she lay in and turning her head to see what it was, she realised that it was movement made by Vanille who sat next to her.

"Vanille?"

"Yeah." the younger girl said with a nod.

"What happened?" Fang asked looking around the room in curiosity, the only answer her mind could give her to anything she asked it was that the right side of her face stung like all hell and was covered in a bandage.

Vanille let out a breath before answering "They knew we were coming."

"How?" Fang asked.

"I have no idea, but me and Jihl got in big trouble back there, we got most of the documents but we were forced to leave some of them behind, escaping that place was more important."

Dipping her head Fang queried "And what about me?"

"When we went back to where we left you, you were unconscious." Vanille responded, biting down on her lip for a second, she asked "What happened to you Fang?"

"That damn agent wasn't asleep that's what." Fang wasn't in any circumstances going to tell Vanille that she'd actually been dumb enough to walk up to the girl.

"You should really be more careful Fang." Vanille scolded in response.

"I know, I know." Fang muttered, but a sudden spark of remembrance made her ask "Wait what happened to the agent, did you kill her?"

"No, it was either kill her or save you."

"Ah." Fang sounded while rolling onto her back and sighing "Just asking, but what became of my eye exactly?"

"Well if you haven't noticed already, that agent kind of killed it." Vanille said jokingly.

"Ahh, so out an eye am I?" Fang joked along with her, knowing that most other people wouldn't dream of joking around while placed in a situation like the one she was in.

"For now." Vanille replied.

"For now?"

"Rosch says the scientist want to try something." Vanille cleared up.

"You know that never really means anything good right?"

"It's not as bad as it sounds; we're talking about robotic parts here, like a robotic eye in your example." Vanille explained some more.

"Hmm, and they want to use me as a proto type?" Fang inquired.

"Yep."

"Huh, do I get a choice in this?" Fang asked, propping herself up on her elbow

"That's what I was told."

"Hmmm." Fang contemplated what she'd just been informed for a time; but it didn't take her long to agree "Sure why not, there's not much I can do with a busted eye."

Vanille just shrugged and got up "Guess so." walking to the door she told Fang "Oh and by the way Nabaat wants to speak with you." her last sentence she'd said with clear distaste in her voice.

The distaste was what prompted Fang to ask "Vanille, why do you hate Jihl so much?"

Vanille shrugged again "Just do." And with that she walked out of the room.

After the first instance of when her eye had been gouged out, there were many others that followed that the scientists took to with fervour to use her as their prototype for their inventions, something that would in the end earn Fang the name "Iron Maiden" among the agents of Cocoon and Pulse.

...:...

The second injury she suffered was the shattering of the bones in her lower right arm beyond repair; the injury decimating all the nerves in the vicinity of the bone. The inside of said arm had been replaced with cybertronic prototypes of the Cocoon scientists.

The third had been her other eye, gone much like the right one but differed in how the eye that now rested in her right eye socket was a prototype, while her newer left one was perfection.

Her forth were her fingers on her right hand, cut off by a crazed Pulse agent, all fingers were now robotic.

Her fifth and last while she served cocoon had been her left shoulder and the top of her arm, crushed under the weight of stray machinery.

All those injuries she'd sustained over two years, from thirteen years old to fifteen years old.

The year she'd turned fifteen had been the last she spent with Cocoon.

...:...

_**Two years later**_

Rubbing her sore shoulder Fang complained to Jihl "You know I might have completed that mission if Cocoon took better care of their machinery; it was sheer luck that my head didn't get crushed when that damn thing fell."

"Stop whining, it's your fault your shoulder got crushed, you're the embodiment of bad luck sometimes you know."

"So I noticed." Fang replied brushing her fingers over her shoulder again.

Exhaling Jihl turned to walk out the door "Oh and by the way Fang as much as the scientist love using you as their little test subject, please try to be more careful."

"Yeah, yeah." Fang muttered, knowing that that was probably an impossible task for her.

"Hm." Jihl sounded before walking out the door, totally not convinced that Fang would do as she said.

Leaning up against the wall Fang sighed, she was tired of all the missions Cocoon was sending her on lately, who cares if she was one of their best agent, even she needed a break sometime. Bringing herself away from the wall she followed Jihl's lead and walked out of the room.

She was in dire need of some sleep.

...:...

In the midst of dreaming Fang felt herself being shaken awake by a hand placed on her shoulder. Eyes fluttering open she found Vanille standing over her, slightly perplexed she turned to look the girl in the face and asked "What, why'd you wake me up?"

"Nabaat wants to talk to you." she answered with disdain.

"Why?" Fang questioned

Vanille shrugged and made to walk out the door but Fang stopped her.

"Villy?"

"Hm."

"I know I've asked this before, but why do you hate Jihl?" she asked without quite knowing why.

Vanille didn't answer; she just shrugged again and walked out the door.

Sighing, Fang rolled over and got off the bed cursing the fact that Vanille had to wake her up just when she'd been having a good dream. Stepping across the tiled floor she walked out the door and began strolling down the halls towards Jihl's room.

Approaching Jihl's door she knocked on it and let herself in, closing the door behind her with a loud thud. The suddenness of the noise and her appearance startling the women inside.

"Why so surprised I thought you wanted to see me." Fang teased.

"Ah sorry, when Vanille told me you were asleep I half thought you wouldn't come." Jihl stated weekly.

Fang rose and eyebrow at Jihl, taking in the women's figure, she found that something about her just didn't seem herself for some reason. Curious Fang asked her "What's up Jihl?"

Jihl didn't do anything for a time, except pass Fang an odd look, but eventually that inactivity ended and she mumbled words too quiet to be audibly as she walked closer to a desk of drawers and silently pulled out a number of pages of paperwork "I'll be in trouble if they knew I took this." she said.

That sparked Fangs curiosity as to what was the content of those papers. Holding out her hand to take them off Jihl as they were passed to her, her mind was taken years back, to a man with a knife at his throat speaking his last words.

Jackson.

He'd said that Cocoon were probably the ones who burnt down her and Vanille's village and oh how right he'd been.

Reading what these papers said made Fang's hate of Cocoon flare up tenfold. They were a description of a project taken out years ago, one set in Oerba. They destroyed multiple settlements and camps in search of new recruits, taking nothing more than a couple of kids out of all the thousands they'd killed.

Stunned speechless the papers slid from her hands and floated gradually to the floor. Her body went rigid as the true magnitude of what she had read began to sink in.

"Fang?" Jihl asked quietly "Are you alright?" knowing that there was only one answer to that question and it wasn't a positive one.

Jihl watched as Fang's knees gave way beneath her and she fell to the floor in a kneeling position.

Bringing a hand to her mouth Fang let out a muffled sound and tears began to form along the rim of her eyes. The realisation that Cocoon actually had it in them to destroy village upon village just for a handful of recruits was too much to bear.

In her current state she barely noticed Jihl kneel down beside her and wrap her arms around her shoulders, whispering comforting words in her ear. Fang remained like that for some time before she somehow managed to get out "Did you know anything about this?"

Jihl shook her head "No." she said firmly "My parents were archaeologists working in Oerba, when they died of disease Cocoon picked me up, they stayed in Oerba for a year after that before coming back here, I had no idea what they were really doing."

Fang believed her "Have you told Vanille any of this?"

"No, she won't stay in my presence for a second; she didn't give me the chance when I tried."

Fang nodded, laying into Jihl's embrace, returning it slightly "Why did you show me this?"

Jihl didn't answer for a while after that; staying silent she contemplated what she would answer. Leaning in closer to Fang she whispered in her ear "Cocoon needs to fall Fang."

Pulling away from the embrace abruptly Fang questioned her "What?"

Jihl's face didn't falter "This is just one example Fang, there are more, much, much more, each one a reason enough to send cocoon into the depths of hell"

"But what do you mean by this?" Fang asked her, her saddened state distorting the usual sound of her voice.

"Escape, go to Pulse." Jihl pushed on.

"But you know what happens to agents who try to defect."

"Yes but if you don't try you'll be trapped in this place forever."

"But-"

"No buts." Jihl cut her off sternly.

Holding her tongue for no more than a moment, Fang proceeded to ask her "What about you and Vanille?"

Jihl smiled at her, but it carried a sad emotion with it "We could never in all our dreams manage to ever hold a candle to you; we'd never stand a chance."

"Vanille will hate you for this."

"For endangering you maybe but you know yourself that she hates the work Cocoon makes you do."

"How is Pulse any different?"

"You'd be surprised Fang, you'll be surprised."

Fang did nothing but stare at Jihl for a long time after that contemplating all of what she had said. Breaking her gaze with Jihl and looking down Fang posed her a final question "Why me?"

"Because I know that you will do anything to make cocoon fall from its seat in the sky, to save the people of this world from their tyranny."

Fang eyes lifted back up to Jihl brown orbs a little taken aback by her words. Getting up off the floor with Jihl following suit, they stood face to face, looking in to Jihl's determined gaze Fang quietly asked her "So what do you plan to do?"

"Get in contact with a Pulsian spy; send word back to Pulse of a defection."

Fang nodded again "Vanille with kill us both for this you know."

"Why?" Jihl questioned her.

"Because I'd be leaving her alone." Fang replied.

"She'll understand Fang, I already told you that it doesn't take a genius to realise that she hates the work you do here."

Fang nodded once again "I want to tell Vanille this myself, okay."

Jihl nodded "Of course."

Letting Fang walk pass her and open the door to let herself out of the room, Jihl watched as the girl disappeared from sight. Left alone in the room she proceeded to pick up the papers Fang had previously dropped and placed them back in the draw she'd originally took them out of and locked them in with a resounding click.

Running her hands through her long brown hair Jihl sighed to herself "Let's just pray to Etro that this works." as she voiced the words, the syllables echoed continuously off the walls, but never out into the halls beyond.

...:...

Walking along the hallways of the safe house they currently preoccupied, Fang searched for Vanille. She found it odd but she hadn't found her in her room where she usually stayed. Looking in to every opened door she passed Fang began to tire of the search to find her friend. It wasn't like she'd stop, no way in hell she'd be doing that any time soon but it was usually hell of a lot easier to find the younger girl.

After another few minutes of looking Fang stopped in her tracks, she thought she'd just head Vanille's voice but that couldn't be right. The girl certainly wasn't in the hall and the only room in the area was Rosch's-

Oh holyshitfire.

The image of Rosch constantly leering at Vanille whenever they were in close quarters flashed through her mind and Fang could of very well have teleported up to his door at the speed she went. Pressing her ear to the door, Fang tried to discern the sounds of what was happening inside.

Her stomach dropped when she heard Vanille's screams.

Banging on the door with all her strength she twisted the Knob that she knew would be locked. Screeching her lungs off she yelled "Rosch open this door bastard!"

Fang boiled over when she heard the sound of his laughter float through the doors the metal frame. Banging on the door again, Fang repeated herself only to be met again by the sounds of his laughter and Vanille's ever growing screams. Slamming her shoulder against the door in attempt to make the damn thing budge she growled in aggravation.

"Damn it!" She muttered resting her hands against the door.

Pushing the door with her shoulder again the action once again proved utterly useless. Slamming her hands down on the door again, the sound of Vanille calling out for her met her ears and she snapped.

But just for a second a memory broke through her rage, a memory of how her and Vanille use to break into locked rooms when they were younger. Taking in the memory, Fang's gaze lingered down to the knob that was only inches away from her left hand.

It wasn't the sort of knob that she was use to but it should still work.

Latching on to it with her right and mostly artificial arm she twisted it hard, it wasn't the traditional way of doing things but the result was the same. The knob burst right off, ripped from the door. Pulling out the small piece of metal that connected both the outside and the inside knobs, Fang persevered to once again slam her shoulder against the door, which with any form of lock that came from the knob gone, opened with the powerful shove.

The scene inside the room made Fang swear that she'd see to it that Rosch suffered a slow and painful death someday, hopefully sooner than later.

He'd forced Vanille back onto the bed and was tearing at her clothes; his hand covering her mouth, probably to hinder anymore attempts to scream out. Vanille eyes widened when she saw Fang break through the door but Rosch himself had become too entangled on what he was doing to notice her.

Walking up behind the man Fang tapped his shoulder and said deceivingly gently "Hey"

His whole body freezing up, Rosch turned his head back to face the girl behind him, but she only met his sights for a second before she grabbed a lamp from his bedside table and smashed it over his head knocking him senseless.

He fell to the side still as death, his hold on Vanille relinquished. Free of his grasp Vanille jumped off the bed and embraced Fang tightly. Holding the shaking girl in her arms Fang offered her words of reassurance while she slowly led her out of the room.

Bringing the still shaking girl out of Rosch's room she led her down the silent halls and down the path to her own room. Once she got there, Fang sat Vanille down on the bed and placed an arm around her shoulder reassuringly, letting the girl snuggle up closer to her. With her head on the crook of Fang's arm Vanille began to cry, tears ran down her cheeks as she clung ever tighter to Fang who in return held her closer as well.

The way Vanille was acting right now reminded Fang all too painfully of ways she had in the past, she cringed at the thought but all the same she had to ask her "That wasn't the first time that happened was it Vanille?" even while saying it Fang already knew the answer.

Beside her Vanille went rigid, the slow nod she gave her making Fang's heart sink all the lower. Hugging the girl even closer again Fang asked "Why didn't you tell me?" it was hard to keep the tears out of her voice.

Vanille's breath hitched in her throat as she continued to cry but she still managed to say "H…he said that if I ever told anyone that he'd, that he'd…" she spluttered to a stop as more tears fell down her cheeks, and a overwhelming sense of fear emanated from her.

Encouraging her to go on Fang whispered "That he'd what Vanille?

Looking back up to meet Fang gaze, the pain in her eyes was simply more than Fang could bear "That he'd kill you."

That made what ever more words that wished to pass her lips die and fade away, the worst thing being, that Fang knew beyond everything else that Rosch would have meant every word of that threat. Given the chance, he would go forward with what his words spoke of.

Lowering her head Fang bit her lip, realising that saving Vanille from him had probably sealed her fate. It didn't matter how it happened, all that Rosch would care about was that now, she knew.

"Vanille"

The girl met her eyes "what?"

"Saving you from him, that… that sealed my fate didn't it?" It wasn't a question.

Vanille bit her lip, tilting her head downwards, though she didn't answer Fang, the action said enough.

Sighing Fang said barely above a whisper "Just great." shaking her head in partial anger she fell back on the bed, laying her head upon her pillow, closing her eyes "Vanille" she spoke up after a period of silence "just saying but I don't think you'll have to worry about me much longer."

"Huh?"

Gnawing on her lip again Fang lifted herself back up and whispered into Vanille's ear "Jihl wants me to defect."

Vanille tensed at the words but she didn't seem shocked by them.

Curious Fang asked "You don't seem surprised, how come?"

Pulling a face, Vanille mumbled in response "Me and Jihl, we're talked about this before."

"What?! I thought you couldn't even stand being near Jihl let alone talk to her and why haven't you told me any of this?" Fang inquired.

Vanille lowered her head "I was afraid you would consider it."

"Why?" Fang asked even though she already had a pretty good idea of the answer.

"Because it's dangerous, I don't want you to get hurt."

Fang scoffed "I think I might get worse if I stay here." she said referring to Rosch.

Vanille shook her head "But what if he doesn't try to hurt you-"

"You know he will!" Fang shot back fiercely.

Vanille stopped with the words still half way to her lips, Fang was right, they both knew that Rosch wouldn't risk anything tarnishing his reputation, even if it meant damaging Cocoon's offensive.

Vanille lowered her head again and offered a meagre "But Fang,"

"No buts, I want to do this, I can't stay here at cocoon."

"What about me-"

"I know that I'll be leaving you alone but you know as well as I do that you'd never survive if you tried to defect."

Defeated Vanille turned away from Fang but she held her tongue for only a moment "Why can't you stay at cocoon?" The words were spoken barely above a whisper but from Fang's position they were as clear as day.

Biting her lip, Fang leaned in so that her mouth was inches from Vanille's ear "Cocoon had a project in Oerba, one that was used to recruit new kids." she stopped there; from the look on Vanille's face Fang could guess that she knew where she was going with this "They would observe and pick out certain kids who had the talents they wanted in their agents, and then they would destroy any evidence that those kids existed." Fang gave a slight twist of her head so that it was facing the door "E.g. by setting their villages on fire, killing their families and friends and just about everyone who knew them; anyone missed would just think the kids died with the others."

"Oh god no." Vanille whispered distraughtly, shaking her head in shock she mumbling almost incoherently "They wouldn't, they couldn't, that's just so heartless."

Fang reached over and patted Vanille on the shoulder "I know."

The younger girl stopped shaking her head and turned to Fang "But all our friends, the people we considered family, they were all killed, just for us, how could anyone do such a thing?"

"Cocoon could." Fang answered solemnly, and it was true, there was nothing Cocoon wouldn't do if it meant an upper hand on Pulse. Murder was nothing to them.

Vanille's hand rose to her mouth, her gaze portraying the disgust that she felt "I guess that just really shows how low cocoon's willing to go for power." hand dropping just below her chin but still held in the air, Vanille swerved back to face Fang again, and breathed out hastily "But what would happen to this world if Cocoon got full control, I mean people already struggle just to live day to day."

Fang nodded and despite the circumstances smirked "Then we just can't let them get that can we?"

Vanille nodded gently as well and gave a small smile in return to Fang "Guess so."

Suddenly Fang snaked her arm around Vanille and pulled her close again, whispering in her "Will you be ok without me villy?"

"Yeah."

Pulling away from the embrace Fang shot out "I call bullshit."

Despite the topic, the suddenness of the swear nearly made Vanille laugh but she bit her lip to stop the sound coming out. "Uh-"was all she managed to get out before Fang interrupted her.

"Rosch has been raping you; you'd have to be an idiot to think him of all people would stop doing that anytime soon, I'm not leaving here without knowing that you have some kind of protection from him."

Vanille pulled away from their embrace entirely and twisted her head to face the door again and gave a silent nod "So what do you have in mind?"

Fang chewed on the side of her lip, though it didn't seem like she was trying to think of something, so the action confused Vanille greatly.

"What?" she asked Fang hesitantly.

A small smirk crossed her face before she said tentatively "It kinda depends, are you willing to put up with Jihl if you really have to?"

Vanille gave a loud sigh; of course, it just had to be Nabaat didn't it "Maybe." she answered.

"It's gonna have to be a definite, she's the only one that holds anything over Rosch, she's the only person here who could keep you safe from him, and one of the few who has the heart to help you at all."

Vanille sighed again but this time a lot softer than the first one "I've got no choice in this haven't I?"

"That you haven't." Fang said in a slightly cheerier tone letting a smile fall across her face.

"What about you then?" Vanille queried dangling her legs off the edge of Fang's bed.

"Hm?"

"What about you, how's this all this gonna start?" she asked again.

"Hmm, Jihl says she going to get in contact with a Pulse spy and get them to send word back of a defection."

"Stop you from getting shot on sight I guess."

Fang gave a quick nod "Yes that probably would be a good thing; it'd kinda be shit if you got killed by the people you were trying defect to."

"Hm."

As the minutes ticked by one by one, the both of them kept up a conversation, nothing that really mattered, just friendly chatter. As it was clear in both their minds that this was probably going to be one of the last times that they would be able to talk like this, whether Fang made it to Pulse or not.

By the time the conversation started to die down they had both worked the way up to the top of Fang's bed and were lying down side by side.

"One last thing Fang." Vanille asked suddenly.

"Hm?"

"Did Nabaat ever know anything about what happened to Oerba? Just so I know I can actually trust the person looking out for me."

"No." Fang answered "She was recruited after her parents died of disease; I'm guessing that they just used her as a translator."

"Hmmm." Vanille hummed softly "Fang." she spoke up.

"Yes?"

"Do think that maybe, just maybe, Cocoon may have had something to do with her parent's deaths, I mean they have a million and one types of poisons down at the labs, who knows what else they could have, it's just a little strange in a way that someone fluent in Oerban just falls into their hands like that."

Fang continued to stare at the ceiling, seriously considering the possibility. Twisting her head so that she faced Vanille she spoke in a hushed tone "You know what maybe they did, hell, maybe this happens everywhere and perhaps the incidents that happened in Oerba were simply ones of millions.

"Maybe" Vanille uttered, it didn't seem that it was beyond Cocoon to do such a thing, at least not anymore.

They lay in silence for a time until Vanille spoke up again "I'm sleeping here tonight."

Fang smiled bitter sweetly "I already knew that."

As Vanille moved closer to Fang and snuggled into her side her mind was suddenly taken back seven years as she remembered a time when Vanille had said a very similar thing to her and she was struck with the thought, just how long had things been going on between her and Rosch?

...:...

Considerably later that night, Jihl stood against the door frame of Fang's room looking in on the scene in front of her. Seeing the sight of Vanille and Fang lying together on the bed had saddened her in a way, it hurt her to know that she'd play a big part in separating them from each other. They were so like sisters, they even referred to each other as such; the fact that there was no blood relation between them meant nothing.

Walking away from the doorway she continued on down the hall, she'd tracked down one of Pulse's spies and was intent on talking with him as soon as possible. If she let this drag out to long the word of a planned defection could leak out and when things like that happened upon gossipy agents ears they would spread like wild fire across the agents and would inevitably reach the executives ears as well.

After passing through many halls and by a countless number of rooms, Jihl came to a stop in front of the one she had set off intending to find. Twisting the door handle she was surprised to find it wasn't locked. Pushing the door inwards she found the person she was looking for. As he became aware of her presence in the room he lifted his head to meet Jihl's gaze. In an almost questioning tone she spoke one word into the otherwise silent room.

"Cid?"

...:...

Walking cautiously through the halls, Fang made her way towards a courtyard that she'd promised to meet Vanille at earlier this morning. The safe house they were currently staying at was, at least if you were looking at it from the outside, a resort. It was set up in a square with a courtyard in its middle; the insides had been renovated to drastic proportions when Cocoon had bought it off its previous owners, e.g. it was fitted shooting ranges, martial arts studio's and security to the teeth, that sort of thing. The public were always told that places like this were reserved for Cocoon employees, which of course they thought meant executives and the like, but more than not it was the agent who preferred the safe houses and the HQs preferred by the top dogs.

The public was so damn ignorant, though even as the thought hit Fang she couldn't help but wonder if maybe, that was better than knowing the truth in this situation.

While Fang's mind was preoccupied, a single hand snuck out from the shadows and covered her mouth, pulling her with it back into the shadows. Fang's first instinct was to fight against it but she soon stopped as a familiar voice rang out "Hey Fang stop it, it's only me,"

Recognising the voice she stopped her struggling and blew out a sign of relief "Oh thank Etro it's only you Cid, I thought you were Rosch."

Curious at her words Cid asked "Apart from the obvious, how come that's so bad?"

"Let's just say we aren't really getting along lately."

"Translation?"

"He wants to kill me."

Cid made a long whistling sound before saying "Jeez Fang what you do to manage that?"

"Not much actually."

"Again, translation."

Pulling closer to him suddenly Fang whispered into his right ear "I didn't tell you this but I stopped him from raping Vanille."

"What!?" Cid whispered incredulously "And he wants to kill you for just that?"

"Yep, guess he doesn't want anything damaging his reputation, through god knows he's done enough to have that happen already, he's just good at hiding it."

"Are we done talking about Rosch now?"

"Yeah," tilting her head to the side Fang asked curiously "Why exactly do you want to talk to me anyway, also while I'm on the subject, why did you pull me over here?"

"Jihl tells me you want to defect." he answered suddenly.

Turning serious, Fang asked him, while already knowing the answer "So you're the spy then?"

Cid nodded, an action Fang repeated saying "I never really took you for the Cocoon type, guess I was right."

"That you were."

Speaking up again, Cid leaned his back against the wall "So, what brings you to that decision may I ask?"

Leaning up against wall next to him Fang replied "Truth be told, I wasn't really even the one that made the decision in a way, Jihl and Vanille have been talking about it behind my back for quite a while, I just agreed to it."

"If that's your reason to do this, you'd never even make it to Pulse."

She laughed at that statement, a cold sound "Oh trust me; I've got enough reasons to do this, enough to even take Cocoon to the ground."

Cid raised an eyebrow, asking the women by his side "And what would that be Fang?"

Turning her head to look him in the eye she whispered "Cocoon set my village on fire, killed all my friends and all the people I considered family, just to get their hands on me and Vanille."

"So your one of them." He muttered, utterly not surprised by her admittance.

"Huh."

"It's common for Cocoon to commit murders upon murders just for one or two agents, nothing's really beyond them." Cid divulged to her.

Fang stayed silent for a second before stating "Vanille was right then."

"She guessed that?"

"Yeah." she answered with a nod.

Dipping his head once, Cid whispered in Fang's ear effectively ending the conversation "Meet me outside the safe house at 11 o'clock sharp." with a small laugh he added "Baby doll with be waiting."

"Who?"

"You'll see." He finished before walking back out into the hall and disappearing down its length.

"That soon?" Fang whispered to herself before doing like Cid and walking back into the hall, now she really wanted to get to Vanille, their meeting in the courtyard could very well be the last she'd get to see of her for a long time. She hated the thought of separating from Vanille, the girl she viewed as her sister and the only thing she had left of her life before Cocoon other than the knowledge of the Oerban language. Walking down the hall, she trode down the path she had intended to take before Cid had interrupted her.

Coming to the door that led to the courtyard Fang raised her hand and waved to Vanille who was already waiting for her outside, she couldn't help but let a sad smile cross her face.

Sweet Etro she'd miss this girl.

...:...

As the afternoon rolled by, Fang found herself standing in front of Jihl's room, raising her hand, she knocked upon the door and heard the women inside called out in response to it "Come in."

Opening the door and stepping inside, Jihl lifted her head to meet Fang's eyes "Ah Fang, I was wondering when you'll be coming by."

Fang gave her a quick nod saying "You work fast don't you?"

Knowing that she was talking about the defection Jihl replied "Yeah, guess I do, but you know yourself that it's never good to leave put off a defection for too long, the faster it's done the better, least someone catches word of it."

"Yeah." Fang answered her eyes directed at the tiled floors, without raising them to meet Jihl's, she voiced "Can I ask something of you Jihl, before I go?"

"Of course." Jihl replied.

Taking a moment to speak again Fang said "Please, look after Vanille for me."

Jihl thought the words a little strange "I was planning to, you didn't have to ask."

Fang shook her head "That's not really what I mean, I-" she hesitated for a second "The other day, when you told me you wanted me to defect, I found Rosch trying to rape her."

That stopped Jihl in her tracks "What?" she asked in an almost monotone voice, disbelieving.

"You heard what I said and he's done it plenty of times before."

A seething rage burst forth from behind Jihl's eyes, the fact that the man she was married to, albeit forcefully, had raped Vanille was enough to push her off the edge "Fang may I ask something of you too?"

"Yeah?"

"See to it that that son of a bitch gets mauled to death." She said with venom enveloping her tone.

Fang gave a dark chuckle "Remember you telling him that a few years back but I was already planning on it."

"Nice to know," Jihl said smiling darkly.

Walking over to her, Fang sat down on Jihl's bed and leaned back on her hands.

"But enough of plotting to kill Rosch for one night."

"Wasn't aware that was possible." Jihl said jokingly, walking to sit on the bed herself.

"It isn't but there were other things I came here for."

Tilting her head to look up to Fang's face Jihl asked.

"To say goodbye then?"

"Hm, course."

Grabbing to top of Jihl's top Fang pulled her into a passionate kiss and pushed her back on the bed

...:...

Startled by the sound of an alarm Fang twisted off her bed and picked up her phone, resisting the urge to throw it at the wall just to shut up the annoying tune coming from it. Looking at it, she read the words 11 o'clock pm and let out a sigh.

It was now or never.

Slipping down the halls relatively unnoticed Fang made her way to one of the side entrances; she'd have no chance getting out of the front one at this time of night. Keeping to the shadows she snuck up on the guards that were in front of the door and hit them firmly on the back of their heads, resulting in them both falling to the ground unconscious. Silently thanking that the robotic parts in her body screwed over just about any machinery she came into contact with made the security cameras all but useless on her Fang slipped through the side door she started walking down a small path that trailed away horizontally from the safe house until she was met with a familiar voice.

"Nice to see you made it out fine Fang."

Twisted around to meet Cid's gaze, the man flashed an amused smile and pointed to a spot directly ahead of her, the action caught Fangs attention and made her turn towards where he was indicating.

Leaning against a lamp post to the front of her was a girl around the same age as her- a strikingly familiar girl.

Raising a hand to her right eye in memory she uttered the words "You."

She was met with the sound 'hm.' as a response as the girl pushed off of the poll and walked closer to them.

Fang heard the sound of Cid's laughter as he told her "This is baby doll Fang, she's our protection."

"Call me that again and I'll cut your balls off." came the sharp response from the girl.

"Sweet pea then."

"Then I'll add your dick too."

Cid shrugged the threats off and turned back to Fang "This is lolly pop Fang."

Fang bit her lip to stop herself from laughing as she watched the scene in front of her, dear Etro that girl could death stare. Meeting Cid's gaze she said with misplaced laughter in her voice "Of course Cid, our protection just had to be the girl that gouged my eye out two years ago didn't it?"

"What?" he said in surprise, turning to face the girl in front of them he asked her "Why'd you gouge her eye out?"

Answering evenly, the girl replied to the question with a shrug "She tried to shoot me in the head while I was incapacitated, she deserved it."

"Oh." was the response he gave, shaking his head quickly he turned back to Fang and said "Fang stop trying not to laugh and let's get going, this is going to be a long night." He finished with a sigh.

Fang gave him a quick nod saying "Kay, kay." Twisting her head to face the girl in front of her she asked her "Hey sunshine, what's your real name anyway?"

"None of your business." Was the curt reply.

Fang shrugged it off and turned to Cid one last time before saying "let's get going then Cid."

With the conversation ended, the three of them continued on their path towards the east side of town where the headquarters of Pulse resided. Knowing all too well that when cocoon found Fang missing as well as the two unconscious guards, this night would turn into hell.

...:...

_**Present time**_

The sun light drifting in from the window and onto her back woke Fang up from her slumber.

Twisting around slightly so that she lay with her face to the roof, she stared up at the ceiling of her room. She almost regretted letting herself fall asleep, while some of her memories couldn't actually be considered bad, it hurt to have to see the memories of people that no longer existed in her life.

"Vanille." she spoke into the silent room, letting a tear fall down the side of her face, she always wondered what had happened to her.

The knowledge that she was MIA wasn't much to go on considering this was Cocoon you were talking about. Sighing she sat up straight and swang her legs over the edge of her bed.

Pinching the bridge of her nose she uttered "God I hate my life."

She lost Vanille and gained Light only to lose her mere months afterwards. Now all she had was Serah but Serah didn't know anything about her other than her name and fake one at that, she didn't know Fang, she only knew Atla.

But what could Fang say to that, while she had known Serah somewhat, the girl had never divulged much information of herself to her, she knew more of topaz than she did Serah.

Sighing again Fang lifted herself off the bed; knowing if she kept Nataliah waiting too long she'd be getting an earful later. Picking up everything she needed for the day she approached the door, opened it and closed it behind her.

* * *

><p>Hope you enjoyed that chapter.<p>

I even made my sister who is my proof reader, go WTF at some points there, and she knows how my mind works making it very easy for her to predict things in my stories.

On an unrelated note, throughout this entire authors note I've had stuck in my head the time my brother yelled out "God damn it I don't have enough cheese pizza" while referring to his cp points when charging his crystarium.

Anyway please review, I'd be oh so grateful if you did.


	4. A broken facade

Hello everyone who's reading this, here's the fouth chapter for you. Firstly I want to apologise for any lateness of this post but my compy broke and I've had trouble getting my beta to proof read this.

Also there's a few things I want to tell you that have nothing to do with this story. And just so you know but Fang= 0erbayunFang and Serah=Envious sky (I'm Claire).

I have these pictures of Lightning you see and a little while back Fang stole them, so just over a week ago me and Serah launched a crusade to get them back. This included stalking my friend home (Not literally), and a grand battle to get inside her house (This included me jumping over her fence and getting this monster of a scratch on the back of my leg).

When we finally managed to get into the house fang restrained me so I couldn't get anywhere near her room and the pictures but Serah just walked right past us and took all of them and walked right out of the house. When I got loose of Fang I ran out and caught up to Serah. But then when I caught up with her she turned to me and said 'Don't ask just run, NOW!'

It was then I realised that she hadn't only stolen my Lightning pictures back but also Fang's picture of Hope (She is a massive Hope fangirl, stealing that picture is suicide). Unfortunately she realised this quite quickly an ardurous chase up her street ensued.

So I got my Lightning pictures back but she took Hope (Who I've successfully stolen today after going to her house, I have no idea why I did so but who cares I stole her Hope picture, mu hua hua).

I'll tell you the other one in the bottom authors note.

**DISCLAIMER:I do not own final fantasy, square enix does.**

* * *

><p><em><strong>A broken façade<strong>_

As the black car drove at a moderate pace towards Bodhum high, the people sitting in its interior sat silent.

Lifting her head to peer over at Fang, a worried expression came over Nataliah's face. The girl in front of her had said barely a word to her since she had given her those documents on Vanille yesterday. Still staring Nataliah took note of the dark circles that had formed under Fang's eyes, clearly she hadn't gotten much sleep last night and Nataliah would have to be an idiot to think that Vanille being MIA was the only reason behind it. The mere mention of Vanille would have brought along with it the painful memories of others that no longer existed in her life.

To put it simply, Light.

Once Fang had defected from cocoon and got to Pulse, she had lost all connections she had with Vanille, so she had no way of knowing what happened to her. Most likely she wouldn't have even hear a word if Vanille died, though that would have depended on the circumstances. But with the painful loss of Vanille she had gained Light, only to lose her as well, Nataliah had always wondered, just how much that would have hurt. Though they hadn't even known each other long it was clear that Fang had come to hold Light dearly and deeply cared about her.

Nataliah herself had never really known much about their relationship, she had always wondered what it was actually like seeing as she'd heard oh so many colourful rumours about it. Things like the fact that they'd met when Fang had been on a mission to assassinate her and that Light herself had subsequently, gouged Fangs right eye out.

How they'd ever developed a friendship was beyond her in almost every way.

The sound of a sigh coming from the seat opposite to her brought Nataliah out of her thought and back into reality. Turning to stare at the women in front of her she asked tentatively, "Fang?"

Nataliah got a grumbling noise in return. She gave little frown at the noise but thought all the same 'W_ell at least that was something'._

"Fang" Nataliah spoke up again "You going to speak any time today?" Receiving yet again no response she tried a different angle. "Your current mood would confuse Serah and her friends you know and I'm sure you don't want them asking you questions." Nataliah let the words hang in the air for a time before going to speak again.

But Fang beat her to it.

"I can't forget."

"Huh?" Nataliah said at the sudden reply. "Forget what?" but she had a feeling she already knew.

"Everything" Fang answered.

With the tears gone Fang stated strongly if a little sadly, "I'm sorry if this silence bugged you but after last night I can't give a crap, those dreams last night, I saw everything." Pausing again to wipe more tears from her eyes that had accumulated Fang went on sounding more and more distraught as she spoke. "Those damn memories won't leave me alone."

Shaking her head Fang cradled it in her hands and let her tears flow down her cheeks one by one.

"Why do they haunt me like this?" Lifting her head she gazed up into Nataliah's face and she was struck by how haunted Fangs eyes looked. "What did I do to deserve this life?"

Something in Nataliah's mind urged her to say '_You killed hundreds of people doing Cocoon's dirty work' _but that wasn't the question Fang had asked, she'd had a life before Cocoon. Back in that life, she'd done nothing to deserve what had happened to her in the years afterwards, but that was a long time ago.

Focusing back on Fang, she found herself almost unnerved by Fang's sudden breakdown, all it took was a few words and she was in tears. Nataliah bit her lip; she must have really been holding it in.

But really, when it came down to it, though it had unnerved her it hadn't all that much surprised her, it was known that many agents, of both pulse and cocoon put up facades to hide who they really were from the people around them. Who's to say that Fang wasn't just a broken person inside? She certainly had the life to call for that. But right now was not the time to be having an emotional breakdown, as personal as their current mission was to Fang, a mission was a mission and Pulse wouldn't like it if it was screwed up because of emotional problems.

Nataliah didn't try to sugar coat that.

"Fang snap out of it; we'll get in trouble from the higher-ups if we screw up, I know that your life sucks, most likely even more than the usual for agents but I'm not going to let you stuff this mission up for both us because of that."

Nataliah stopped for a second, partly because she was so startled by the look Fang gave her after her past comment.

It wasn't angry or annoyed or any of the emotions that Nataliah would have thought would have been thrown her way, in fact she couldn't name what she saw in Fang's eyes in that moment. It looked as if Fang could see right through her, right into the depths of her soul.

Nataliah turned away quickly so as not to look into her eyes, she began talking again but on a more personal level that she thought Fang would maybe listen to.

"As well Fang, you know as well as me that Serah would see though any fake smiles you throw her way, she has the eyes of a hawk you know, so would you, would you please try to cheer up, just a little at least."

Fang stared long and hard at her after the words had left her mouth and the sheer amount of no emotion in her eyes them made Nataliah shiver.

"You don't know what you're asking." she uttered quietly.

Their conversation ended, Fang turned towards the window and began staring out to the outside of the car, choosing to ignore Nataliah from then on in.

Sensing the futileness of trying to talk to her again Nataliah resigned to being silent as well. She cursed the fact that she had even tried to cheer Fang up in the first place, it seemed that Fang had come out worse than she'd gone in. Nataliah sighed to herself, thinking that as least she'd be able to talk to Travis when Fang was gone. She smiled at the thought and settled in closer to her seat.

It wasn't long before they found themselves in the car park at Bodhum high; Fang got out without a word and left both Nataliah and Travis sitting in the long since silent car.

Sighing to herself again Nataliah pinched the bridge of her nose. The action piqued Travis's curiosity and he leaned backwards from the driver's seat to question her on it, "Fang bugging you?"

Nataliah nodded "Yeah, that she is."

"What happened, she was fine yesterday wasn't she?"

The statement caused Nataliah to laugh slightly but it was a dark sound "Travis I know you're new to this but you'll have to realise fast that most agents seem perfectly fine but in truth and this especially goes for ones like Fang, their nothing but." She sighed sadly. "They're just broken excuses for people."

Travis stopped with words half way to his lips, but abruptly he shook his head and turned back around to start the car.

Before he managed to get the keys even half way to the ignition Nataliah stopped him with a question.

"You scared you'll become like her aren't you?"

That question had struck the bullseye and Travis's grip on the keys tightened considerably.

Twisting around so that she faced him Nataliah slipped through the gap separating the driver's seat from the rest of the car and sat right beside Travis. Flashing him a quick smile Nataliah told him "It's hard to avoid really, when you spend your life in the game. Fang never stood a chance, she been in it since she was five, you know."

"Five?" he exclaimed in surprise.

Nataliah nodded her head "Yep, her sister was only three."

"She has a sister? Why have I never heard of her?" he asked.

"It's difficult to explain why Fang doesn't talk about her." she said rubbing her chin. "All I've really heard about her is that they weren't related by blood."

Travis didn't miss that past tense in her sentence, "Weren't?" he inquired.

Nataliah gave a sad nod of her head "Yeah." Pausing she glanced over at Travis hesitantly. "Do you remember that paperwork I gave her yesterday? You're gonna hate me for this I know, but they were about her sister."

She stopped at that but Travis encouraged her to go on "And?"

Nataliah breathed out another sigh. "They said she'd gone MIA, but you have to remember now that Fang use to work for Cocoon. Her sister never left there and well when it comes to Cocoon, MIA never actually means MIA. More than likely she's dead or locked in a torture chamber, probably by Cocoon's own hand rather than her own or another agents."

Travis stared at her long and hard after that, their breath the only thing breaking the heavy silence that had now overtaken the car.

It was Travis who spoke up first, "Why? Why would they do something like that to one of their own agents?" he asked in horror.

Nataliah shrugged "You'd be surprised at what Cocoon would do, there's good reason Pulse agents despise them to the core."

Travis breathed a sigh into the air. "I guess I can see why Fang's so upset now."

"Hm, in a way but what happened to Vanille isn't the only thing she's upset about right now."

Travis guessed that Vanille was the name of Fang's sister and he couldn't help but let the thought slip into his head, '_Heh, what a pretty name'._

Focusing back on Nataliah he asked, "What else is bothering her then?"

Nataliah returned his stare and stated "Because what happened to Vanille is déjà vu, it's bringing up memories she doesn't want to remember."

"Like what?"

Frowning sadly Nataliah turned her gaze to stare into the lap. "Let's just say that Vanille isn't the only person Fang lost this way."

Travis stayed silent, he didn't need to ask who she was talking about, he already knew.

...:...

Fang sat leaning her back against the brick wall of one of the buildings just to the side of the bus bays. Serah's bus hadn't arrived yet but some of her friends were already at school and waiting for it. She didn't make a move to approach them, to say she didn't feel like talking was a colossal understatement and she wanted to keep the time between having to talk and not having to talk as long as possible.

Fang grumbled to herself, knowing that Serah would spot her the moment she stepped off the bus. She wasn't at all in the mood to keep up that damn Topaz and Atla charade. Unfortunately that time came all too soon; the number seven bus pulled into the bus bay and students started filing out one after the other.

Nearly the exact moment Serah's feet had hit solid ground and she was out of the confines of the bus, her watchful eyes found Fang. Lifting her arm into the air, Serah waved over to her and beckoned for her to come closer.

Grumbling to herself again, Fang lifted her body off the ground and made her way over to where Serah now stood with her friends. Giving the clearly downcast Fang a smile, Serah approached her and quietly said in a voice she'd meant only Fang to hear, "What's up Atla? You don't seem too well."

Fang gave her a small shrug and told her in a small voice, "Truth be told, I don't really want to talk about it"

Severe depression was not a subject she was keen on telling Serah about.

Serah didn't pester her about it after that, as small as her voice had been the statement had a finality about it that wasn't to be questioned. Turning back to the rest of her friends Serah gave them a look she was hoping said, _leave Atla alone right now. _Luckily they saw her message and began a conversation amongst themselves while they made their way inside.

As they moved down the hallways Fang's mind drifted off into a world of its own, and with her mind as far away as it was Fang only picked up parts of the conversation. They seemed to be talking about the coming holiday two weeks from now but Fang wasn't too sure. Like always the conversation seemed like it was beginning to revolve wholly around Serah.

She could hear Lebreau asking her, "Topaz what you going to do in the holidays, got anything planned?"

In the corner of her vision Fang could see Serah shake her head and answering, "Nah, just going to see what happens really."

Fang saw Lebreau shrug her shoulder just before coming to a stop and pointing her finger in the air and making an 'oh' sound.

"Why don't we go to the movies or something, there are some good movies on around now, it'd be a waste not to go see at least one of them."

Fang thought she heard Serah reply to that but her mind was already drifting away from the world in front of her and she didn't like where it was going.

But to the dark, like it'd been in the morning and the night before, Serah had only been able to chase it away for so long. Her mind kept on telling her that nothing of what these kids were saying would have the chance of coming to pass. How it'd hurt to know the truth.

Looking at the latest reports from Pulse's spies, Cocoon was zoning in on Serah's location and fast. There wasn't anything much they could do anymore to protect her except be ready for when Cocoon did find her. And if those report were anything to go by, that time would be all too soon.

Fang was woken up from her deep trance by a hand clamping around her shoulder. Twisting to face whoever was gripping her, she was met with the sight of Maqui's shocked face.

"Whoa there Atla, you nearly bumped into the wall there, you should paying more attention."

Fang stared blankly at him for a few seconds before her mind caught up and she registered what he was saying. Shaking her head in an attempt to clear it of her previous thoughts she muttered a quick apology and broke away from the group surrounding her. They stared at her in confusion for a bit before she shook her head and stalked away from them, clearly not wanting to be followed.

She knew it wasn't the smartest idea in the world to leave Serah alone but now she found that suddenly she was hit with the urge to be alone and far away from people. Fang pinched her nose in annoyance, breathing out a quick "Damn it."

All it had taken was those accursed documents and that string of dreams and her façade was down and out.

Her mind just wouldn't shut up about her shitty life, choosing to emphasise every bad thing that ever happened to her and she was downright losing it. She couldn't keep her attention on what was happening around her for more than five seconds and her mind just kept taken her back to that dark place she didn't have any intention on going. Slapping both of her cheeks to bring her into reality she shook her head and breathed out a long sigh.

Glancing about the crowded halls, Fang found a way out of the place and away from people of any kind. Somewhere in her mind she noted that there were people around her giving her odd looks but couldn't care less what they thought of her behaviour. Finding a door at last, Fang stepped though it and out into the grounds beyond, seeking somewhere out of sight and out of mind.

...:...

Still in the hallway where Fang had left her, Serah stood with her friends balancing her weight on one leg from the other nervously. Biting the tip of her finger in the same nervous fashion, she turned to the others and questioned. "Shouldn't someone go after her? She didn't seem herself."

Lebreau shrugged. "Maybe not right now. We'll see how she is after class; Mrs Kathina would kill us if she caught us."

There was something weird in her voice as she said that sentence but Serah decided not to ask. "If she's there at all," Serah muttered to herself but shrugging her shoulders.

Serah followed Lebreau's advice and headed to class knowing full well that she wouldn't find Atla there.

...:...

She'd guessed right, Atla hadn't gone to class; she wasn't there first period or for the second. She wasn't even there for recess either by the time that rolled around. Walking into the cafeteria with Lebreau and Maqui, Serah proceeded to sit down at a table with her them, waiting for the others to arrive. She breathed out a long sigh as she did so. The action caught Lebreau's attention and she asked, "You still worried about Atla?"

Serah lifted her head to look up to her friends face and giving her a weak smile she answered with a quick nod. "Yeah."

Lebreau gave her a quick smile in return and with a shake of her head she said, "'Course you are."

"She didn't seem well last we saw her. I'm worried." Serah told her.

"Yes, we see that, but do you actually have any idea where she is? She could've easily of left the school grounds hours ago; the gates were still open when she left." Maqui interjected.

Pausing with words half way to her lips, Serah fell silent for a moment before answering "You kind of have a point there," she said scratching the back of her neck.

Maqui gave a quick 'hm' sound before returning to eating his lunch and leaving Lebreau and Serah to their conversation.

Serah blew out a long sigh and rested her elbows on the table where she sat "He's right, I guess she might not even be here anymore" she muttered.

"Hmmm." leaning closer Lebreau said quietly "But what if she is? You know as well as do that she could use your help right now; you should try and find her."

Biting her lip Serah contemplated what Lebreau had said before nodding her head and saying "I think I will actually."

Getting up from the table she announced the same to Maqui and walked across the tiled floors to the door out of the cafeteria and left to search for Atla.

...:...

Fang breathed out a sigh and changed into a more comfortable position against the wall. She wasn't surprised that no one had found her; she'd hidden herself at the back of the biggest building on school premises. Said back of building faced the fence that was the border of the school, it was only visible if you looked out of a handful of the windows but she'd made sure to keep clear of them.

Satisfied with the position she'd changed into, Fang closed her eyes again.

She wasn't sure why she'd left; she just couldn't be around people right now. The kids that went to this school had no idea of her troubles, no idea of what was really happening out there. Neither did any of the adults here, excluding any cocoon operatives scouting out new recruits. Fang bit her lip at that thought, how strange it that it was when she was ordered to keep watch of Serah here that he had been stationed here.

"Rosch" she muttered into the air.

She pulled at the silvery-black wig that adorned her head, staring at its long strands. How simply had she managed to get under his sights?

A wig, contact lenses, eye lash extensions, some makeup and not using her actual voice were all it took for him not to recognise her. It was pitiful that a highly trained cocoon agent could not recognise her with such disguise. A kid could recognise her for the love of god. A smile crossed her face at that thought; she actually had proof of that one.

Leaning forward some, Fang laid her head on the knees, crossing her arms around them.

Her thoughts began to swirl around Rosch, memories drawing themselves up from her conscious and flashing in her mind for seconds before floating back down to the darkness. That man had caused her so much pain throughout her life.

For starters he'd never shown a shred of kindness to her or any proof that he even possessed a heart. But his perpetual cruelty to her was only small when compared to the rest of the man's offences. He'd done his best to traumatise Vanille from a young age, something he'd explained in great detail to her when she'd been locked up in cocoon's torture chamber.

A shiver ran up her spine at the thought of the place but she did her best to ignore it.

He'd put Jihl though all hell every moment of their married life, something that was certainly still happening. Fang's hand tightened into a fist as the thoughts kept coming. He'd decided to kill her after she'd found him trying to rape Vanille. She evaded being killed back than by her defection but that hadn't stopped him from seriously attempting to see her to her death a number of times when they'd come face to face afterwards and believe you me, that number wasn't anything small. But that wasn't the worst of it at all.

There was still what he'd done in the torture chamber to account for and that had been beyond there was that mission, the resounding fact that it was his fault, his fault that Light…that Light–

Fang shook her head roughly, trying to expel the thoughts; they would only manage to drag her down again. But as she felt tears lace her eyes at the memories she knew she damage was done.

Her mind fell back to the dark.

...:...

Peering around the side of D block, Serah picked up to what was very obviously the sound of crying.

Tossing up whether or not to actually check around the building, seeing as it was one of the most obviously out of bounds in the school. Her mind made up, she tentatively stepped forward and walked pass the side of the building and towards its back. Dead grass scrunched under her feet and she wondered if the sound of it would scare the person off.

But it hadn't.

"Atla," Serah said quietly upon seeing just who had been around the building.

Atla didn't respond to her, so walked closer to her and said louder, "Atla!"

With Atla still giving her no response Serah walked to stand by her side and sat down next to her.

Observing the sobbing girl quietly, Serah found that Atla didn't seem at all aware of her presence in the area; she was just sitting there, crying, in a world of her own. So she lifted her hand and placed it on Alta's shoulder giving her a little shake.

"Atla," she whispered quietly.

The motion woke Atla up from her daze almost instantly and she looked up to the girl who sat beside her. She stared at Serah for a moment before a strangled sound managed to escape her mouth and she leaned over and pressed her head into the nook of Serah's shoulder and continued to sob.

Serah was taken aback by the suddenness of the movement, but even so she raised her hand and placed it on the small of Atla's back, cradling her as she sobbed into her chest. Wondering as she did so, what on Earth had caused Atla to become so depressed, or had she always been like this and just never let it show?

Had all she'd known of the woman been nothing but a façade?

* * *

><p>And that's the chapter. Now for the other thing I told you I would tell you here.<p>

It was my brother's 17th birthday yesterday so he had a party and his friend came over (He had 19 friends over, that not even all he has). Now theres a tradition among his friend that every birthday a few people have to chip in for a dud present (They once all chiped in to buy someone shampoo) So when he was opening his presents, he picks up the biggest one and reads the note taped to it.

This note said "From Chris and Anthony, shortening your grocery bills since 2011."

So he opens it and guess whats inside, ten boxes of coco pops cereal and two chocolate rabbits. (His friend proceeded to steal the rabbits when he was distracted) So currently I now have ten boxes of coco pops in my lougeroom, one of which was already partially eaten because apparently Anthony got hungry.

Mattpuppy and his friend are insane so this is all the norm for them.

Getting back to the story, please review, please please review, there are about 40 hits on the last chapter but I only have 4 reviews, if I don't get any more I swear I'm gonna go insane.

So please find it in your heart to review.


	5. HQ

Hello everyone that's reading meh story.

This is a delightful chapter as I'm sure you'll agree, my beta said I was evil after she read it.

Something a little odd but somehow my teachers shoes are finding their way into this story, Fang is wearing my old english teachers Mrs Dowe's shoes and one of my OC's in this chapter is wearing my old HSIE teacher miss Singh shoe's. There are other shoes but they haven't made their appearance yet. One pair found theire way into it just today, there was a teacher in my english class who was helping out my teacher and she had these really cool high heeled boots and the moment I saw them they instantly found their way into this story, they are now fangs boots.

Another thing thats been playing on my mind lately is a funny fact about 0erbayunFang.

When I first met her I thought, oh she isn't going to like any of this Final Fantasy stuff, but then I mentioned FFXIII to her offhandedly when she asked me what I was doing on the weekend. And she took great interest in it and became obssessed just like my sister and me.

She is now Vanille and Fangs love child.

She also got into fanfiction when I hyjacked her laptop to read flight stories that were in my favourites, and after she took it off me she read then and found she really liked them. Hense the fact that she's a fanfiction writer but she really liked Hope/Light over Flight.

**DISCLAIMER: I Do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.**

* * *

><p><strong><em>HQ<em>**

Groaning in annoyance and slamming her hand over the alarm clock as it beeped out its ever-irritating little tune, Fang rolled over in bed and groggily opened her eyes. Wiping her hand across her eyes to rid them of sleep, she breathed out a sigh and sat up from her position on her back and crossed her legs. Stretching her limbs, she yawned and sent an angry look at the alarm clock that sat on her cluttered bedside table. She cursed the fact that Nataliah made her keep it there and said she wouldn't wake up otherwise.

Fang knew that she was right of course. Most days she could sleep to the afternoon unhampered unless someone woke her up, but that in no way made her hate the damn alarm clock any less. She'd even thrown one out the window one morning, only for Nataliah to buy her another one.

Swinging her legs over the side of the bed she got up and stretched her limbs once more before walking across her room to search for her phone. It was Saturday today, so she was freed up a bit, on weekends watching over Serah was usually left up to Anna and another shadow agent they apparently had on this case. Fang didn't know who they were though, according to her higher-ups, she hadn't even met them before.

Rummaging through an unruly pile of her clothes scattered across the floor, Fang's hand finally found her phone amongst the mess and pulled in out so she could view her messages. It was the same old stuff, two messages from Serah asking if she could meet up with them and one from Lebreau with a similar request. Scanning their messages quickly, Fang returned to seeing who else had contacted her. Confusion struck her when she found three from Nataliah, that was a big number for her, she usually only sent one each morning. Opening the first message she read:

_'Fang, you've got a day off today. Serah's going out with her friends, shadow agents tailing them.'_

_See you on Monday,_

_Nataliah.'_

She'd sent that message two hours ago according to her phone, glancing at the clock on her bed side table Fang saw it read 7:30.

_'God how early does that girl get up? Or more importantly, how in the world did she know of Serah's plans so early in the morning?'_Fang thought to herself in confusion.

It didn't matter how long she spent working as an agent, it'd always amaze her how much the corporations could find out about people. Returning her focus to her phone she read the second message:

_'Fang, change of plans. Pulse wants you over at headquarters, I don't know why as of yet but you'd better get yourself over here as soon as you read this,'_

_Nataliah.'_

Fang grumbled when she'd read the message, she hated it over at headquarters. This little apartment she stayed at for this mission had been her own little solitary place away from others and she preferred it a world over the crowded halls and rooms of headquarters or one of the safe houses. Getting over her grumpiness slightly Fang read the last message. It was considerably less formal than the last two, a lot less formal:

_'For the love of the goddess and all that's holy Fang, are you seriously not awake yet? Headquarters will rip your head off if you're late for one of their summons again.'_

_Message me back when you get this, please,_

_Nataliah.'_

Staring at the time the message was sent; she found that this had been sent only five minutes ago. She didn't see why Nataliah was so annoyed, the second message had only been sent half an hour ago and if she got ready quickly and left for the headquarters soon she'd be there within the next half hour anyway.

Messaging her back, Fang told her that she was awake and would come as soon as possible. She also made sure to inform her that not all people have a body clock that makes them wake up at 4 to 5 o'clock every day and that it was only 7:30.

Snapping her phone shut, Fang searched about the chaotic mess of an apartment for suitable clothes that weren't completely crushed and not in dire need of ironing like so many of the clothes that surrounded her were. In the end she found a black crop top and a pair of black skinny jeans that were semi-wrinkled, but at least wearable. Through the jeans Fang looped a gold and white belt that she found on the ground and put on a pair of black lace up ankle boots with thick heels, which had been placed by the door. Pulling a black leather jacket with a fur-trimmed hood off the end of her bed, she slipped it over her form and left it unzipped.

Walking up to a bookshelf that lay against the wall that was used for anything but books, Fang moved everything around so that a small seal-able plastic bag was visible. Picking it up off the bookshelf she stared through its translucent form for a moment before dropping it back down on the bookshelf and turned away.

_Still empty, _she thought; of course it wasn't like it could be anything different, things like that couldn't just regenerate out of nothing. She needed to get some more and quickly, it was starting to drive her insane without any. But at least it gave her some other reason to go to headquarters than what would most likely turn out to her being yelled out

Walking away from the bookshelf she picked up everything else she needed and headed out the door of her apartment and in the direction of the apartment complex's underground car park.

...:...

The sound of boots resounded through the dark car park as Fang walked across the concrete expanse. Passing by model after model of different cars, she strode towards a smaller shape amongst the army of vehicles. Stopping in front of the shape that was covered with a greyish blue protective covering, Fang walked to its side and pulled off the covering with the lithe action of her hand.

Underneath now sat a black motorbike, shined to perfection and exceedingly well-looked-after. Picking up the helmet from where it sat hanging off the handle bars, Fang pulled back her raven locks and put it on. Fastening the helmet to her head, Fang mused why on earth Pulse didn't let her go out with this more.

It was an old thing she'd fixed up herself when she was fifteen, with a little help from someone else with more experience of course. But then again, she _did_ do most of the work.

Finishing tying the helmet to her head, Fang ran her hand along the bike's dark surface and leapt on to the long seat that ran along its back. Getting a feel for it after its long stay while dormant in the car park, she turned it on, backed up from the car spot and drove it out of the dismal car park. As the cold breeze hit her as she left the car park behind her, Fang gripped the handle bars tighter and sped up.

From a young age she'd always loved riding on motorbikes, though she never really got that many chances to ride them. Even with her own, Pulse never really liked her to use it; they always made her ride along with Nataliah or some other agent in a bloody car. But being late for one of Pulse's summons was inexcusable, so they couldn't get on her ass for riding it there right now.

Turning a sharp turn, Fang felt the wind caress her skin as she rode down the road, the wheels crushing the asphalt beneath them as she went. When she was out here, completely by herself and without anyone whispering in her ear telling her what to do, it was one of the few places where the dark side of her mind could never reach her. She was utterly free and there was nothing that could hold her down.

Speeding up once more, Fang sped down a straight, laughing to herself as the wind blew wildly through her hair. Gripping the handlebars tightly, she swerved around a bend and continued on to ride down the road that would eventually lead her to Pulse's headquarters. As the building edged ever closer she slowed down her speed considerably, approaching it at gradual pace before entering the car park riddled with secret video camera and disguised security guards.

Gently coming to a stop in a parking space just off to the left of the towering building, Fang removed her helmet and flicked her untidy hair back and out of her eyes. Sighing, she got off the bike and flattened her clothes out in an attempt to rid them of some of the wrinkles that the ride here had caused.

Just like always, her ride here ended long before she wanted it to.

Hanging her helmet on the handle bar of the bike, Fang locked the handle bars in place with a special lock she'd purchased especially for the motorcycle. Even in a highly protected place like this, her mind would never cease to be paranoid about someone trying to steal her bike, hence the lock. Gradually beginning to walk away from her precious bike and in the direction of the immense building that was Pulse's headquarters, Fang adopted an unreadable look about her. Blanking your face was a common habit among agents who'd been in the game for quite a time. After all they had seen of backstabbing and the cruelty of some of the people out there, it wasn't hard to see why they wouldn't want people to know them well. Not letting people know of your current thoughts and feeling was just an extension of that.

As her booted feet hit the concrete path that led directly to Pulse's front door, Fang gave a small wave to a man sitting on a bench not too far from her. She knew who the man was, but only slightly. He was a security guard who was constantly being put out here; he used to work at malls, she'd been told, for most his life, until he was unfortunate enough to have a friend of his hack into one of Pulse's computers; obviously not knowing any better, the man himself hadn't even read the information his friend had found. He'd gone home the moment his friend had told him any tidbits of what he was reading, but Pulse, being Pulse, took them both in.

They were lucky it hadn't been a Cocoon server that had been hacked into, in her opinion, knowing firsthand how horrible serving Cocoon was.

As the man waved back she gave him as bright a smile as she could muster, it wasn't much but, being the wise old man he was, could see she meant well. Walking past the bench, Fang soon found herself in front of the two gigantic glass doors that made up the entrance. Pushing them open, she stepped inside and into the grey hallway beyond them. Outside of here looked so benevolent and innocent; if only the people looking at the place knew that both the front doors and every single window all throughout this place was made of bullet-proof glass. That and the fact that only a few metres from the door Fang had just stepped through there was a pair of monstrous metal doors five inches thick.

Walking up to face the doors in question, Fang glanced to their left side and took out an ID card from inside a hidden compartment in the inside of her jacket. Treading lightly towards the left side of the huge pair of doors, Fang lifted the ID to a small camera on the wall. Whoever was beyond the doors registered what her card said and opened the doors to let her through. Swinging opening at a pace that obviously showed both doors were rigged to be opened electronically, they slowly opened to let Fang past them and into the main part of the building.

Walking through the sizeable metal doors, Fang walked down what was left of the hallway, past a small room that housed whoever was charged with opening the monster doors and into a large metallic chamber. Directly to the front of her now, far across the room was a row of three elevators that took you up to the other 57 levels of the building, and to the left and right of the chamber were hallways that bridged to the many other parts of the considerably-sized ground level.

The chamber itself was filled with dark brown leather lounges placed at similar intervals throughout the room and nothing much else. It promoted the innocent look that the outside showed to all onlookers ignorant of Pulse's true nature; it almost made you forget about the monstrous metal doors that lay only metres behind you, but not completely.

Grabbing the hood at the back of her jacket, Fang lifted it over her head, covering her face with it and stepping into the huge metallic chamber. She walked towards one of the long brown lounges near the end of the room, knowing exactly who she'd find sitting in it.

As she strode closer and closer to the lounge, she saw people moving away from her instinctively and migrating closer to the hallways on either side of the room. She watched them go, catching a black haired girl looking back at her with some degree of fear obvious in her eyes.

Fang shrugged off the look and returned her gaze to what lay in front of her. When it got down to it, she really couldn't fault her for looking at her like that, or any others who gave her similar looks. You learned real fast here that there were just some people you'd do good staying away from and in the past few years of her life, she'd really earned her spot in that category.

She didn't like people, hadn't for a long time now. There were only a few people she could stand and even less she held close. But life had taken that minority away from her, leaving her with only the people she could tolerate. The only person that she had any kind of strong feelings towards anymore was Serah, but she just like the rest of them,meaning that she could so easily be taken away from her.

Reaching the lounge at last Fang approached a girl who had her back turned to her and was seemingly wrapped up in a book she was reading. But as Fang reached over to tap on her shoulder, the girl spoke up without even turning around to see the one she was speaking to, "Nice to see you finally made it here. I've been waiting here for a long time now, Fang."

Closing her book and placing it on her lap, she twisted her head around so that she was looking up at Fang and smiled at her. Not returning the smile, Fang simply shrugged and replied, "Thought I told you in that text that most people don't wake up at four to five o'clock in the morning. Isn't that right, Nataliah?"

"Doesn't mean I don't," Nataliah countered, getting up from the lounge and placing her book, which looked like it had certainly seen better days, on a small table in front of her. Standing in front of Fang she placed both hands on her hips and gave her another smile, making the difference in their moods even more pronounced. Even her current outfit spoke volumes of a much different mind state the younger girl was in when compared to Fang. Her sleeveless white top that looked like she had quite literally splattered different coloured paints on it paired with a pair of denim shorts, to Fang all black combination, spoke of a world of differences.

Ignoring the cheerful greeting, Fang pushed past Nataliah and headed towards one of the three elevators not that far from them. Nataliah followed after her, just like Fang predicted she would. As she caught up to her, Fang asked, "So what did they do this time?"

Playing with the short strands of her freshly cut hair, Nataliah hummed, "Hmm, same old same old mostly, but they're a little peeved about your mind snap the other day."

"Damn it, how'd they find out about that? I wasn't exactly within reach of any of them," Fang asked with a hint of anger in her voice.

"Shadow agent," Nataliah answered like it was the simplest thing in the world.

_Of course,_ Fang thought with a roll of her eyes. It wouldn't surprise her if they'd actually told the other agent to keep an eye on her. As they reached the elevators, Fang pressed the button for up and both girls proceeded to wait for it to slide down to them. But with a building as big as this one, who knew who else was using the elevator right now, so they could be waiting awhile.

Shifting her weight onto her right leg, Fang breathed out a sigh. It didn't matter how short waiting for an elevator could be, she always hated it. Looking over at Nataliah through the corner of her eye, Fang noticed her change in hairstyle. It was considerably shorter than before, only coming down to her shoulders, which was a surprise seeing how much Nataliah had loved her long hair; and had a fringe that frayed out around her face.

"Nice haircut," Fang said almost sarcastically, "When did ya get it?"

"Yesterday afternoon, after you were dropped off and I came back here. There's an agent here who used to be a hairdresser, who cut my hair off when I wasn't looking, and apologised by styling it for me."

"Nevertheless they're still dead to you I'm guessing," Fang said.

"They cut off my waist length hair," Nataliah stated angrily, the statement enough of an answer for Fang.

There was a small beeping noise as the elevator came down to their level, its door opening wide to let them in. Heading inside, Fang twisted on her heel to face the doorway where Nataliah still stood.

"Not coming?"

"No," Nataliah answered shaking her head. "I have things to do around here, I was kinda just with you for the talk."

Fang shrugged at her answer as the doors closed, preventing any chance for Nataliah change her mind as the elevator started its journey upwards.

...:...

Staring at the closed door for a moment longer, Nataliah turned back around and began to walk back to the seat she'd previously occupied. She watched on as a handful of people also did the same, returning to seats she knew they had sat at until they sensed Fang's presence in the room. Nataliah frowned to herself when she thought of that, she didn't like some of the unspoken rules of this place.

Why was it that it was a rule to stay away from agents like Fang, the broken ones? Couldn't anyone see that that following such a rule would only make them worse than they already were. They were just people with one too many bad experiences to their names. It may have been a little hypocritical in a way for her to think like this, as even she had been scare of them before she'd been paired with Fang on this mission. But over the past few months she began to re-evaluate her thoughts of the broken agents, finding that they were very much different then their reputations made them out to be. If only others could see that too.

Sitting back down on the lounge, Nataliah picked up her well-loved book from the table and held it close to her chest, wondering in curiosity just what Fang had been like when she'd enjoyed life and before she'd began to rue her every breath. Taking the book away from her chest she ran her hand over the cover, picking at the sticky tape that held the cover on. Opening up the book, she thought to herself as she found her page, _'Paint The Wind, take me away.'_

...:...

Walking through the open elevator doors on the 50th floor, Fang headed off in the direction of one of the many meeting rooms that existed throughout this floor.

The 50th floor was infamous for its room being used to plan out missions and to hold meetings to evaluate an agent's progress in a mission. She herself hated this floor, as it signified to her every time she was called here during missions when she stayed at some simple little apartment and away from any Pulse-associated building.

Walking past room after room, not a small amount of which had the sound of yelling emanating through the doors, Fang finally stopped in front of one with the number 58 imprinted on the door. From when an agent first started working for Pulse till when their service ended, mostly from being killed in action, they were given the number of a room they had to come to every time they were summoned here.

Knocking on the door, Fang took to leaning against the wall beside the door as she waited. There was yelling coming from inside this room like it had from many others, so Fang guessed that the agent who was inside had messed up big time, going by some of the things she was hearing.

After a time the yelling began to quiet down, but the man who had been doing so still held an argument with whatever poor soul happened to be in the room with him. Fang tilted her head to the side as she heard the door open some beside her, the head of someone peering through the gap they'd made.

"Can you save me? The old man won't shut up, you should see this poor girl he's talking to."

"Cid," Fang muttered, slightly surprised but keeping her voice quiet so that the man inside who was still holding his argument with the other agent couldn't hear them.

Cid nodded, "Yeah it's me, I'm stuck with 'the Dugong' all day. This is only the second meeting and already I want out."

Peering through the slightly open door, Fang looked inside the room to see the humongous tub of lard of a man Cid was referring to. Visibly flinching at the sight of him, she complained to Cid, "Shit! I got him today? That damn Dugong hates me you know."

"Hate is an understatement Fang and you know it," Cid responded with a hint of humour in his voice.

"You're not helping," Fang told him just as the poor agent who'd been inside with 'the Dugong' pushed past both of them and stepped into the blessed hallway in her escape from the man.

"Cid," the overly loud voice of a man called from inside the small room.

"Yes?"

"What are you doing over there," the voice questioned.

"Just talking to our next appointment sir; she's been waiting out here for a while now," Cid said with the same hint of humour that had existed in his voice before.

"Sure, sure," the man muttered. "Well bring her in, we gotta get started sometime."

Stepping back inside the room to let Fang inside, Cid walked over to sit at a table placed in the middle of the room. Stepping away from the wall, Fang walked to the open doorway and braced herself on the door frame. The instant the man in the room set eyes on her, he became notably grumpier. Without closing the door behind her, Fang strode towards the seat on the opposite side of the table from the two men, clearly hearing 'the Dugong' mumble something to Cid about his great dislike of her.

Smirking at his comment she informed him as she took her seat, "Hey tub o' lard, I can hear you perfectly." Leaning forward and placing her head on her hand and smirking at him she finished, "But don't worry, the feeling's mutual."

Clearly disgruntled by the comment, the man took to glaring at Fang angrily, who dropped the fake smile and took to watching Cid as he got up to fetch a small pile of paperwork from a drawer that sat against the back wall. Bringing the paperwork to the table he sat back down and laid it out for Fang to see.

Scanning across them with her eyes Fang asked, "What's this?"

"Paperwork," Cid stated plainly, knowing the statement of the obvious would annoy Fang to no end. Scowling at him, she said with unneeded venom, "I can see that, but what's it about?"

"It's about Serah. What did you think it would be?"

Grumbling to the side of him cut short what other things he would have said to annoy Fang, "Just get on with it," 'the Dugong' told him in annoyance.

Cid nodded in compliance and told Fang while gesturing to the paperwork in front of him, "This was stolen from Cocoon by one of our spies. It's about Serah as I said before, but Fang," he said looking her in the eye, "she really isn't going to be able to stay in hiding much longer, they're closing in on her pretty fast."

Biting her lip as Cid passed her the paperwork to look over, Fang eyes scanned over the pages in her hand with worry evident on her face. Cid hadn't lied about her not having much more time, if anything he'd understated it. Cocoon had narrowed the area to where she was hiding down to Bodhum and they were right there, they even knew which area of Bodhum it was. They also knew what school she was attending and they had a number of suspects on a list that decorated the page she was holding. Her heart sank as she saw the name 'Topaz Drake' printed on the paper.

Dropping the paper back down to the table, she crossed her arms and laid them down on the tabletop's edge, continuing to staring at the paper she'd just let go of. It didn't surprise her too much in a way. She was aware that there were many Cocoon spies in Bodhum right now, some of which were even scattered across high school, several of them acting as scouters.

And then there was Rosch to think about. He of all people would never let Serah slip from his grasp. After what she'd done to him there was no way he'd ever find it in that stone heart of his to forgive her. But why he hadn't as of yet figured out she herself had been right under his nose for the majority of the time since that incident was beyond her. Why was it that he had to target Serah so much anyway? It had been her who had done the worst to him, not Serah. Was it just because she was the weaker one, or was he just that much of a dickhead that he was doing this just to get back at Fang?

Chances were that it was the latter.

Lifting her head back up to stare the two men sitting at the table in front of her she said, "She doesn't have much time left, does she?"

'The Dugong', being the inconsiderate clod he is, just told her in his annoyingly loud voice, "What do you think?"

But Cid, knowing more of her personal situation, shot a look of hate at the man beside him – which wasn't noticed – and nodded grimly to Fang.

"Yes, but you can still keep her safe as long as your prepared for what's to come," he told her.

An unreadable look passed over Fang's face for a moment as she stared at Cid before she shook her head and told him coldly, "You can never be too sure of that."

Swallowing over a lump in his throat that'd developed as he looked into her eyes, Cid nodded weakly at her, knowing that he wouldn't be able to convince her of the more positive outcome. Sighing, Fang stared up at the ceiling, her dejected disposition effecting the mood of the room. "Anything else, or can I go?" she asked him.

Cid stayed silent but the man beside him said, "Yes actually there is, in regards to that breakdown of yours the other day."

Suddenly itching to do nothing more than rip his head off, Fang stopped him before he could finish his sentence, leaning forward once more and snapping at him, "It's none of your business, so stay out of it."

Ignoring her, 'the Dugong' went on to say, "You know yourself that Pulse doesn't stand for their agents screwing up their missions just because of emotional problems."

"But that doesn't mean my problems just up and disappear, now do they?" Fang argued back close to yelling, getting increasingly more angry at the man.

"Yes, but what you are ordered to do by Pulse always comes first. You can't go against them no matter what; your breakdown the other day left your charge next to unprotected and-"

Standing up and slamming her fist on the table Fang yelled back at him, "I don't care!" Shaking her head brusquely she continued yelling, "Sometimes I just don't care, I don't give a shit that I left Serah unprotected, I couldn't take it! I don't care what the hell you say to me, I just had to get the fuck away from there!"

Temporarily stunned to silence, both men sat staring up at the still-seething Fang. Slamming her fist on the table again Fang turned away from them abruptly and headed towards the door. Snapping out of his stunned silence, 'the Dugong' yelled back at her retreating figure.

"Wait, where do you think you're going? I'm not done with you yet!"

"I don't give a shit you fucking pile of lard, you have no more business with me!" Fang screamed at him, successfully ending the argument with the finality of those words.

Walking through the door and slamming it shut on the two men she continued on her way through the 50th floor, taking her sweet time to calm back down.

...:...

Watching the highly irritated man beside him glare at the closed door Fang had just walked through, Cid found himself wondering just what on earth had happened to the girl he'd brought here, the one who'd loved life despite her situation, instead of hating her very existence on this planet for every moment of her life.

Sighing, he picked up the pages of paperwork off the table, got off his chair back and walked to the back of the room to put it back the drawer. Whatever the case, the girl he'd brought here was long gone.

...:...

Stalking away from room 58, Fang headed in the direction of the elevator and as far from room 58 as she could get. Stopping sharply in the middle of the hallway, pinching the bridge of her nose she muttered out a quick, "dammit."

It was getting worse; she just couldn't control her emotions anymore, in seconds she was going from despaired to furious. That idiot had said barely anything to her and just like that she'd wanted to rip his head off.

Sighing and letting go of the thought, she remembered that she had another, more personal, motive for her coming here, the cold flashes she'd been suffering from recently only serving to indicate how much she needed it right now. _'45th floor, room 27,'_ she repeated in her head, knowing that that is where she'd find Maxine.

Treading through the hallway in the direction of the elevator again, she spied several people along the way, all of whom shied away from her at the presence of her dangerous aura. Ignoring the looks they gave her as she passed, Fang soon found herself at the elevator. Pressing the button for down, she waited for the elevator to reach her.

The wait didn't take nearly as long as it had back on the ground floor with Nataliah and the elevator shortly reached her and opened its doors wide to let her in. Walking inside, she lay her back against the wall and waited as the doors closed and the elevator departed downwards. The elevator quickly reached the 45th floor and opened its doors to let Fang out. Stepping out, Fang was forced to move to the side quickly as a small girl passed her to gain excess to the elevator. Catching the young girl's eye as the doors closed behind her, Fang found her eyes had a strong look to them that hadn't existed in the other people she'd seen here today. That saddened her in a way. For that kid to have a look like that in her eyes she must've grown up here, she was probably a legacy.

Taking her eyes off the closed elevator doors, Fang continued on her way to room 27. There were much more people in the halls here then there had been on the 50th floor, the cause of which most likely that the 40th to the 45th floors were used as agent accommodation.

Making sure to keep her head down so as not to let anyone see her already partially covered face, Fang moved through the many agents scattered about the halls, ignoring the looks they threw her way as she passed them by. After a time of moving through the crowded hallway, she finally came across a room with the door marked with the number 27. Hesitating momentarily in front of the door, Fang knocked on the its surface and waited for the room's occupant to respond.

A few second passed before the door opened and a woman appeared in the door way. Taking in Fang's form outside the doorway, she motioned her inside with a gesture of her arm. Treading into the room, the woman closed the door behind Fang, a devious smile forming on her lips. Stepping away from the door, she turned to Fang and placed both hands on her hips, the dark smile still existing on her lips.

The woman, like Fang, was currently wearing all black, with a black tank top, short skirt and sleeveless jacket adorning her body. On her feet were black high heeled shoes that had three-inch platforms and had small circular silver beads that were placed a lines and decorated random spots across the shoe

"So, back again are we Fang?" the woman asked with a dark cheeriness in her voice. Giving the woman no verbalised answer, Fang shrugged to her and refused to meet her eyes.

"Aww, so you're not even going to give Maxine an answer now," she said, running a hand through her prematurely-grey boys'-length hair that was flecked with brown, a tell-tale sign of her severe anxiety.

"Let's just get this over with," Fang cut her off.

She pouted at Fang for stopping her short while she was having fun teasing her, but nevertheless she still walked past the double bed in the middle of the room and over to a cupboard on the other side of her decently-sized bedroom.

"Ok, ok, I was just having some fun, let's not get angry now." Moving things aside, she came across a miniature locked chest that deceivingly looked like something you'd put jewellery in or some little keepsake. Taking a small key that was attached to a necklace she wore around her neck, she asked Fang absent-mindedly. "So how much money you got on you?"

"Same as always," Fang answered her curtly, clearly not wanting to talk to her.

Unlocking the box with the key, Maxine opened it and took out a small sealed plastic bag that was filled with a powdery-white substance. Holding it out to Fang she said with a mischievous smile plastered across her face, "I want my money first remember, this stuff doesn't exactly come cheap."

Nodding, Fang walked over to stand just out of reach of the bag in Maxine's hand and took out a considerable number of dollar bills from her pocket and handed them to the woman in front of her.

"Good," Maxine with her same mischievous smile, throwing Fang the bag in her hand. "There you go."

Catching the bag in both her hands, Fang proceeded to tuck it away in the hidden compartment of her jacket and walk away. As she was about to turn the doorknob she heard Maxine complaining to her from her position across the room, "Aren't you going to say goodbye to little old Maxine here, Fang?"

Fang tossed up ignoring her for a second, before deciding on saying to her, "And why should I do that?"

Ignoring any other comments the woman threw her way Fang opened the door and stepped back into the crowded hallway. Leaving room 27 far behind her, Fang pushed her way through the agents scattered around the hallway and headed back to the elevators. Absent-mindedly she felt the small package neatly hidden in her jacket.

Seohilen, otherwise known as crystal dust, a hallucinatory drug commonly used among the agents. It was infamous for being highly addicting and near fatal to stop using. As when you're on the drug your body makes changes to deal with it and becomes dependant on it, so if left without a nearly constant dose anybody using it can fall severely ill, the cold flashes she'd been suffering for the past few days the first sign of it. But in no way wanting to kick the drug, it was as simple as getting more and that's just what she'd done.

Approaching the front of the elevator she pressed the down button once again and waited. When the doors opened to let her through, she walked inside and waited for them to close again, laying her back against the wall as the elevator went down level after level heading towards the ground floor. A beeping noise announced its reaching the bottom floor and the doors opened wide to let its occupant outside.

Walking out the door, Fang strode across the large metallic chamber and in the direction of the front doors. She noted somewhere in the back of her mind that Nataliah was still sitting at one of the lounges reading her book as she passed. And she was sure as she walked ever closer to the front door that Nataliah was watching her back as she left the chamber behind her.

Reaching the monstrous metal doors, she held up her ID card to the small camera attached to the wall to notify the man in charge of opening the doors who was leaving, and the doors opened to let her through Walking past them she soon found herself back at the entrance and at the two glass doors that would lead her out of the building. Glancing back at the now-closed metal doors for a moment, Fang returned her gaze to in front of her and pushed the doors outward.

Outside now, she traced the path that would lead her back to her motorbike, each step taking her further and further away from Pulse's headquarters. Reaching her motorbike at last, she unlocked it and took the helmet off of the handle bars and placed it back on her head. Clipping it on, she swung her leg over the bike and sat down on the seat, turning the bike on as she went.

Backing up out of the car spot, Fang turned the bike and drove it out of the car park, hoping that she wouldn't have to visit the again headquarters anytime soon. But more than likely her situation wouldn't agree to that, and it also depended strongly on how long her current Seohilen supply lasted. Driving down the road, her motorbike took her away from Pulse headquarters and back in the direction of her apartment.

...:...

Closing the door behind her roughly, Fang dumped her keys on her bedside table and took off her jacket. Searching for the hidden compartment in the jacket in her hands, she felt the bulge in the jacket and unzipped the hidden pocket. Taking out the plastic bag filled with Seohilen, she dropped the jacket carelessly on the ground and focused on the package in her hands.

She'd been going crazy without any of this stuff for the past week. She wanted it so much right now, oh dear Goddess how she wanted it.

With a swift arm movement, Fang wiped half of what was on her bedside table on to the floor, not even caring what it was that fell. Opening the edge of the plastic bag a bit, she poured some of its contents on to the table and knelt down so that the bedside table was just below her head. With her finger she pushed the powder on the table into a straight line, making sure she didn't miss any of it. Licking remnants of it off her finger, Fang felt her body twitch as she felt the grains touching her tongue, only serving as a tease for the rest of it.

Leaning over the table, Fang bent down and snorted the Seohilen up her nose, feeling its dazing affects set in almost instantly. Leaning back down, Fang lay on her back, barely noticing what she was doing. She stared up at the ceiling as the drug took its affect, but by the end she couldn't even register that the ceiling was there at all.

As the seconds ticked by her mind drifted further and further away, leaving her unable to form the slightest action or even know where she was anymore . Sweet oblivion took her away from the darkness in her mind and where she was.

This is what Seohilen does.

* * *

><p>Yeah, what a fun chapter that was. This story justs gets darker and darker, this is so not the worst of it.<p>

A funny thing about this chapter is that because of the inside joke between me, my sister and 0erbayunFang, that I'm Lightning, my sister's Serah and 0erbayunFang is is both Fang and Vanille, 0erbayunFang now a drug addict according to my story. Tip, do not yell out such things when in the middle of a group of people, 0erbayunFang learnt that the hard way.

Also, the fat man in this chapter or the dugong in other words, does actually have a name, it's Robert Chennix.

It's a little weird but the name Seohilen reminds me of south korea, so when I write it down it kind of makes me laugh, so when Fangs lying on the floor getting high, I'm just stting there trying not to laugh. How fun.

I'm not to sure if I described Seohilen very well, both in side effect and what it does when you use it. But it will be talked about more as the story goes on so that should fill in the blanks for you.

I also spent a part of this chapter in some sort of daze, so there is a certain part that's not writen as well as the rest of the chapter. And that's all I really feel like rambling about so I'll guess I'll end this here.

So bye for now and for the love of god don't forget to review. I really want those reviews.


	6. Ignorance is bliss

_Hello all my readers, hope your enjoying your holidays so far, if your on them that is, cuz Aussie students are._

_Firstly I'm sorry it took a while to get this to you but I have good reasons for why that was so, number one is that I took a week off writing and am still having trouble getting back in the swing of it, number two is that this chapter was a bitch to write, I have never changed a chapter so much after first writing it all the way through, and thirdly my beta was scared that my sister was going to go insane if she didn't give her her chapters back quick enough so she was doing those before mine, even though I sent her mine first, luckily I've got this issue sorted out and she now knows if she pulls something like that again I'll rip her head off (when she gives back all three of my imooto's chaps before just one of mine I get pissed) and lastly my epilepsy's been acting up and I had a minor seizure the other day and reading from then on kind of set me off, but I'm better now._

_And referring to the story now, We got some more of Fangs past in this chapter, but most of it's in relation to Serah._

_And just to clear it up if it confuses you, in this chapter if it is being written from Serah's point of view she is called topaz but if is from a p.o.v of someone who knows the truth about her she is called Serah._

_There was actually a part when I was writing this that I just randomly took the lappy off hibernate and forgot who's p.o.v I was writing from and it threw my mind for a few seconds._

_I also realised when I took a moment to think about it, but I don't have a way to describe just how much Fang hates Rosch, I tried but I came up short, would anyone out there be able to help me figure out a way to describe her hatred of him without it sounding to light? it'd be dearly appreciated._

_But anyway, on with the chapter._

**Disclaimer: I don't own final fantasy XIII, Square Enix does.**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Ignorance is Bliss<strong>_

Slamming the door shut behind her, Fang gripped her stomach and headed directly for her apartment's bathroom. Reaching the toilet she fell to her knees and proceeded to throw up the contents of her stomach into the toilet bowl.

When the onslaught came to an end, she sucked in a breath hungrily, and braced herself against the wall. She felt sick; oh Lord how she felt sick. She'd woken up this day feeling fine, but the nauseating feeling that had settled itself in her stomach had crept on her little by little until it was just too much to take. It figures now after so long without it that the illness would return again, just creating one more bad thing for her to deal with.

Failing to fight back another wave of nausea, Fang pushed back off the wall, gripped the rim of the toilet seat and heaved until there was nothing left to vomit up in her stomach except bile. Sucking in breath once more as the vomiting stopped; Fang edged away from the bowl, and attempted to stand. But as she walked across her tiled bathroom floor, Fang found her strength beginning to wane rapidly and soon fell over. Landing by the door, Fang straightened up to sit upright and slid herself over so that she could lean against the wooden doorframe.

Wiping gathering sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, Fang cursed the existence of this illness from her very core. She didn't even know why she had it; she'd started getting it after all that shit that she and Light had been put through when they were sixteen.

Fang shivered at the very thought, it wasn't necessarily something she liked her mind to dwell on, she'd forever bear scares, both physical and mental, because of that incident. With a shake of her head Fang banished the thoughts from her mind, but a single memory persistently clung to its rim.

A blurred memory of a dark dank room, a place that emanated certain danger for anyone trapped within. A place that spoke of great pain, and a history immersed in sorrow.

Biting her lip as that set itself in her mind for a moment before vanishing, Fang attempted once more to lift herself off the floor, this time with better results than the last. Making her gradual way towards her bed, Fang let one more thought course through her mind as she fell onto the bed and let sleep overtake her drastically tiring body.

What happened to her back then, and why couldn't she remember it?

...:...

Tossing about on her bed, Fang sought to expel the nightmares that were casting an ever-ominous shadow over her mind. Sleep had long lost its comfort on her, years of dark deeds and painful experiences had seen to that. Compared to some who loved its sweet oblivion, she ran from it, knowing that that was what she'd never get.

Every time her head it the pillow she'd be reminded of the fire that had torn her home asunder, the murders she had committed under Cocoon orders, the last words of her victims to the look of utter fear when they realised that this would be the last time they saw the light.

But those were nothing compared to what else her twisted mind could throw at her.

They didn't compare to the hazy memories of when Cocoon had held her in that torture chamber for months, where she was constantly exposed to the agonised screams of others suffering just like she was. Where she was abused in every torturous way possible all the while chained to the ground to make fighting back but a dream within a dream. Absent-mindedly, Fang gripped her left leg as she thought of that place; there were some things they took from her there that she could never get back.

No matter how much she longed for them.

And then there was the anguish she'd suffered at the mere thought that she was the only one that had survived that damned mission. Pulse had practically offered them up to Cocoon on a silver platter when it came to that operation, it was no surprise at all that it failed. She had nearly killed herself afterwards; it was beyond her why she didn't.

She held the knife in her hands. What was stopping her from just ending herself with it? Why did she have to stay in the hell-hole that pasted for a world anyway?

But she was too weak, she couldn't make herself do it and knife fell from her hands.

So she lived on, but she never recovered from what had been done to her at Cocoon's hands, and as the months passed by, she found her mind twisting itself to the point that it was foreign even to her. And the person that had existed before was gone, like they had never been there in the first place.

That was when Fang had become addicted to Seohilen; it was a sweet oblivion that sleep could never be, a reprieve from her own mind, a place when life couldn't wound her. But it was a relief that came at a price. Seohilen was a dangerous drug to deal with, almost fatal to stop using and so damn addicting Fang had no doubt that she would kill just to get more of it. She already stole to get money to pay for it.

So, years went by, and people who had once viewed her as a friend began to avoid her, and one by one they disappeared from her life. And she didn't care, she didn't care that she was alone, she didn't care that people began to look up to her with fear in their eyes.

It meant nothing.

But then she'd met Serah. Light's only family, her only connection to one of the people that had the meant the most to her in life. Fang knew from what she'd heard of around the safe houses that Serah had already been an agent for quite a while by the time they had met. Though her story was a very different when compared to the many agents out there.

While she, like Light, had been a legacy, a child born to an agent, Serah hadn't been raised around Pulse; she didn't even have anything to do with them until she was nine. Her mother and her sister had fought to keep her away from this life, at the cost of Serah not even knowing of her family.

But when her mother had died, Light lost what power she had to convince the top dogs to listen to her, something that jeopardised keeping Serah away from them and Pulse as a whole. So she made up for the lost in power by becoming one of Pulses top agents, she put herself hell just for the sake of her sister. But one screw up and she lost the power that she had spent years agonisingly gaining and the top dogs stopped listening to her.

And Serah was welcomed into the inferno that was the world of Pulse's and Cocoon's agents.

But Serah never met her sister, before she even got the chance Light had already been sent on that accursed mission, and all trace of her was lost. All Serah ever knew of her sister was what she heard on the winds, whispers and rumours spread by agents.

When Fang met Serah the girl was only 14 years old, six years her and Light's junior. She became rather protective of her almost absent-mindedly, something she continued to be today, but never friendly. Friendly was no longer something she was.

She felt she owed it to Light to protect the girl she'd spent the better half of her life protecting when she no longer could. But there was nothing she could do to save Serah when the top dogs were involved. She held no power over them to sway their decisions by that point, when Fang came back after that botched mission, they no longer trusted her.

She was considered a loose cannon by many of them, so mentally fucked up that they didn't know what she'd do. So when they took advantage of Serah's exceptional skills, there was nothing Fang could do to stop them. And it was déjà vu, just like her sister before her, Pulse near sacrificed Serah for their own sake. The only difference, she came back alive, but her actions turned Cocoon into a bunch of wolves baying for her blood. She lasted only two months of attempted assassinations before Pulse grew fed up and erased her memory, along with Serah Farron's entire existence.

But Fang's world was one full of people that didn't exist, what was one more of them to Cocoon. The time was coming, the safety that Serah had known as Topaz would soon come to an end, and she'd be left once again to the mercy of two corporations who cared nothing more than the destruction of the other.

...:...

Groggily opening her eyes to the dimming light of sunset that was floating in through her half opened windows, Fang rolled onto her side on the unmade bed she lay on and scanned her eyes across the room. Her sleep hadn't been a nice one; it was the same nightmare packed cage it always was.

The only upside was that it had afforded a brief respite from the stalking sickness that Fang felt tendrils of returning. Wiping a hand across her eyes, Fang attempted to sit up, only for the movement to make her world spin before her eyes in dizziness.

Waiting a moment for the light-headedness to pass, Fang swung her legs over her bed and held the frame tight to stop herself from wobbling in her disorientated state. Looking across her clothes-laden floor and over to bookcase at the end of her bed, Fang let one though encroach her mind.

'_There's only one thing I truly want right now.'_

...:...

Casually closing the book in her hands, Nataliah laid in her lap, her eyes gradually making their way to stare at her cell phone. Biting her lip, she seriously contemplated calling her. It wasn't the wisest decision she'd ever make, but she was sincerely worried about Fang. She'd only been informed briefly of Fang's physical and mental problems, but it had been enough to make her concerned about her. And the titbits of information she'd picked up since about Fang's current and past life only amplified that worry.

Casting a look to the other side of the room fleetingly, Nataliah noted that Travis was indeed still sitting by the fireplace with the twilight series by the side, ripping out the pages of the first book and throwing them into the lit hearth. She almost felt sorry for the person that owned those books, Paige, the twiheart she is, would miss them dearly.

Turning her head back so that her phone was within her sights, Nataliah's hand hovered over the mobile for a moment in hesitation before she picked it up and dialled a number that had never before been entered on her phone. Bringing the phone up to her ear, she listened to the insistent ringing noises it created and prayed to god that the person would pick up.

Either way, she'd have a lot of explaining to do.

...:...

On a lime green couch in the middle of an immaculate apartment's living room, a girl lay napping in the late hours of the day. Her mind enclosed in the world of sleep, she didn't notice the sound of her phone ringing until it merged itself into her dream in the form of a frog faced man who instead of croaking or talking, made the sounds of a phone's chime.

Snapping her eyes open at the oddity, she sat upright, and was confirmed that the sound hadn't just been a creation of her imagination when a woman with short brown yelled at her from the start of a hallway, "Topaz, pick up your phone before I throw it out the window!"

Flicking her blonde hair out of her eyes, 'Topaz' lifted herself off the couch to find her still-ringing mobile phone, yelling out in apology as the woman walked back into her previously occupied bedroom. "Sorry Anna I was asleep."

Finding the small silver object on top of a pile of paper that were on the pine wood, island table within the kitchen, Topaz stared at it curiously, seeing that the number of the person ringing her was marked unknown. Shrugging, she clicked a small green button on the phone's top left side and answered whoever was calling her with "Hello."

...:...

"Hello" Serah's questioning voice said, obviously wanting to know who was calling her.

About to respond, Nataliah found her voice caught in her throat. Biting her lip as Serah continued to question who she was talking to, Nataliah hopped from one leg to the other in indecision. She was plagued by thoughts of what would happen if someone traced the call, seeing as it would lead to bad consequences for both her and Serah. But her hesitancy only lasted moments before she realised that when it came down to it, she really couldn't care less, not anymore.

Bring the phone back to her ear from where it had fallen to her side she answered just as she heard Serah mumble something about hanging up.

"My name is Nataliah."

...:...

"My name is Nataliah." a woman's voice finally answered.

"Who?" Topaz inquired. She didn't recognise that name, did this person just have wrong number or something.

"Nataliah," the person reiterated.

No recognition of the name coming to her, Topaz questioned the woman again. "Do I know you?"

"No, let's just say I'm a friend of a friend," the woman replied.

"And you're calling me why?"

"Because I need your help."

...:...

Thirty minutes later and Topaz blew out a sigh as she stood out the front of a five story apartment building, its dark feature highlighted by the diminishing light of sunset. That phone call hadn't been the nicest she'd ever received, not by a long shot.

It was though, the catalyst to why she was currently standing in front of an apartment building she never even set her eyes on before.

Walking across the freshly cut grass towards its double doors made of shimmering glass, Topaz pressed a hand to her head as one turbulent thought after the other sought dominance in her mind. That woman, Nataliah, had told her things she impressed upon her that she wasn't to speak a word of to anyone. She'd made it clear that it wasn't for the sake of keeping them a secret, but for the fact that she herself, wasn't meant to know of them.

But why was that so? What she had told her of was regarding her friend, so why wasn't she meant to know?

It confused her to no end.

Nataliah had told her of Atla's secrets. Though she highly doubted that they were all of them, it was enough to both confirm her suspicions of what was up with Atla lately and cause her to worry even more than she already was.

Pushing the apartment complex's doors inward, Topaz stepped inside to the pristine reception area paved with expensive looking white-cream square tiles. To her left was a black wood reception desk with a tall dark haired woman standing behind it, waiting to serve whoever was in need of her service. At the end of the hall was a polished metallic elevator and an entryway to the staircase that accompanied it up the buildings five stories.

Treading closer to the reception desk, Topaz placed her hand upon its wooden surface, repeating the number that Nataliah had told her as a question, "Where exactly is apartment c14?"

"Ah," the woman sounded, looking up at Topaz from where her gaze had fallen to the desk. Scratching her head in thought she replied, "Third floor, and off to the left once you get out of the elevator."

Nodding to show that she got it down, Topaz thanked the woman and headed in the direction of the elevator. Pressing the button for up, Topaz waited the irritatingly long time for it to reach her and open its twin doors. As Topaz walked into the mechanical cage, her mind was assaulted with the revelations about Atla Nataliah had told her of.

The existence of her severe depression caused by means that Nataliah refused to tell her of, dismissing her questions by saying that it was a story for another time. Also of her severe paranoia, something that led her to trust no one, to the point of hiding her true self from the public eye, by any means. Disguises, voice altering and fanatically hiding personal information.

Topaz would have liked it to end there, but it didn't. There was more, more than Nataliah had permitted Topaz to know and more than Nataliah herself knew.

Drugs. Of course there were drugs; it shouldn't have surprised her as much as it did. After all Nataliah had told her it should have been obvious, she guessed she was just denying the clear possibility.

The beep of the elevator doors clinking open woke Topaz from her thoughts and she snapped her head up to face the open doorway. Walking out of the elevator she found herself in a long hallway, carpeted with intricate rugs coloured dark shades of blue, somewhere between midnight and navy. The walls were almost blindingly bright, they weren't white but the colour was still extremely similar.

Peering to the left of the hallway, Topaz spied small decorative chocolate-coloured tables placed along the walls as hall continued on. Walking in that direction, Topaz paced along slowly until she came to apartment number c14. Hesitating in front of the room, topaz bit down on her lip, not knowing at all what to expect.

She now knew that despite having known Atla for the past six months, she didn't know her at all. Not what she really looked like, not her real voice, not who she was. All Topaz knew of the true Atla was the existence of her mental problems, drug addiction and that she bore a scar that ran down her right cheek, something that she always covered with make-up if she had to go out.

It was the one thing Nataliah had told her that she could use to always identify her.

Swallowing over the lump in her throat, Topaz turned the door knob and let herself inside.

...:...

Blinking her eyes up at sudden noises, Fang's drugged mind made a useless attempt at trying to perceive their source. But as dazed as it had become with Seohilen racing through her veins it was useless to even try. So she fell back to nothingness.

The noises didn't stop; they kept on sounding off at irregular intervals, but never the less frequently.

_'Was someone talking to her?'_

She wouldn't know, even if her eyes had been open, the eyes of someone high on Seohilen were blind the world. And their ears were deaf. Their body numb. And they were left completely unaware of what was around them, what was speaking to them, what was happening. Most of all what they were doing.

Users became nothing more than a being void of emotion, any sense or coherent thoughts. They became nothing. And that's just what Fang was right now. As long as Seohilen existed in her system she would remain that way, hours would pass in a daze, her mind not even registering the minutes ticking by. And nothing anyone did would change that, no matter what they did, no matter what they yelled.

No one could control what she did while high. Least of all herself.

As the time passed somewhere, vaguely, in the back of her mind Fang thought she may have heard a scream, but the daze of Seohilen did its job of dismembering any effort to try and figure out what was causing the sound. Her was mind was long gone, and it'd be a long time till it returned to her.

...:...

The hours of night were slowly eating away when Fang woke from her daze, her body instantly set upon by her stalking illness. She felt exhausted and freezing, with the feeling of nausea settling itself in her stomach. Out of want for warmth Fang wrapped her arms around her body, snuggling further into the surface she was laying on. But as she moved, Fang was surprised to find that the floor was no longer what cushioned her body.

She was on her bed, with the covers brought up to her shoulders.

While she would have been thankful of the warmth it created, if it actually managed to reach her, Fang jolted up in surprise. Crawling back into bed wasn't necessarily something she did while high.

So the only explanation that left was-

"Good to see you're awake," a recognisable, feminine voice that was clearly tainted with a sense of sadness said to her from its creator's position sitting on one of Fang's lounge chairs. If the coldness hadn't already awoken her from the realms of sleep, that did.

Freezing in place, Fang gaped at the woman in front of her in shock. A name sprung to her lips begging to be said, but she quickly halted herself from letting it be said when she found it wasn't the one she was allowed to call her.

She couldn't call her Serah. The women in front of her wasn't Serah, she was Topaz.

"Y-you" she stuttered out at last, not recovering from her shock in the least.

Why was she here, how'd did she even know where to find her, she'd never once given away that information to Serah or any of her friends.

So how come she was here now?

Watching Fang visibly trying to figure out why and how she was here, Serah tilted her head to the side and offered the confused woman with the explanation.

"A friend of yours told me where to find you, they said they were worried about you, but couldn't come here to check up on you their self, so they asked if I could."

A friend? She didn't have any friends, not anymore. But as quickly as the question had arisen the answer came to her.

"Nataliah," she muttered, with a shake of her head, grimacing as the movement brought on a wave of dizziness. She was the only person who would worry about her enough to actually take action and do something. But more than likely she was hampered by Pulse, forbidden to come here or some bullshit like that. So she sent Serah.

Nodding at her realisation, Serah replied "Yeah, it was her."

Lying back down on her bed as she became too tired to keep herself sitting upright, Fang felt a cold shiver run down her body. She pulled her covers closer around her in an attempt to get some of their warmth to seep into her cold body.

As she fought to keep her chilled body warm, she felt Serah sit down upon the bed by her chest, her weight making an indentation on the bedding.

"What's wrong with you Atla?" she then asked.

At least Nataliah didn't mention her real name.

Having no want to give away any more information than she had to, Fang croaked out over her insistent cold shivers,"That depends, how much did Nataliah tell you?"

She'd already surmised that Nataliah had at least informed her of her paranoia, or a question would have already been raised about her appearance. Drug addiction was probably on that list as well, it would explain why she sounded so sad when she first spoke up. It had been a revelation that had had Nataliah furious when she had found out about it.

"Enough to know that you're far from all right, after all that woman told me that's certainly something you can't deny."

Finding the strength to keep herself awake was beginning to fade, Fang tried and failed to keep her eyes open. As her eyes closed Serah continued to stare down at her, earnestly waiting for an answer. Before sleep overtook her Fang managed to tell her sternly, "I don't owe you that answer."

"Why? Why won't you tell me?" Serah exclaimed.

But the words were lost on Fang, as sleep had already taken her from the waking world.

...:...

The dream she found herself in was of a time she wished to forget.

The sound of someone knocking on her door stirred Fang from her less than sound sleep that was full of nought but tormenting nightmarish visions. Opening her eyes to see her dark room that lacked light, she slowly raised herself from her position on her bed to sit upright so she could investigate the sound.

Looking to the side so she could check the time, her eyes found her clock that sat on her bedside table, and she saw that it was only 2 o'clock in the morning.

Perplexed, Fang swung her head around to stare the door, wondering who on earth was knocking on it this late, or early, whatever the hell you'd class it as. Getting up from her bed, Fang walked over to the door and opened it, becoming even more confused when she found Serah standing in her doorway, looking visibly distraught.

As she stared down at the girl, Serah shook her head, the movement causing her long pink hair to sway widely, and lowered it, a teardrop dripping off her chin. Lifting her face upwards once more, Fang was taken aback by the petrified emotion that shone from within her eyes.

God the girl was scared.

Not knowing what else to do, Fang stepped aside and ushered the girl inside to her chaotic mess of a room. Walking past the threshold, Serah walked into the room and came to a stop at the end of Fang's unmade queen sized bed.

She stayed there stationary for a few moments before she turned to face Fang, the petrified emotion not leaving her eyes on the least. Tears were glistening at the rims her eyes, but she fought to keep them from falling, something she was much better at than Fang could ever hope to be.

Sniffling a sob, Serah whispered to Fang so quietly and saturated with fear that it was barely audible, "Fang, I'm scared."

Fang didn't need to be told that twice, the girl in front her of emanated that emotion.

"Why" Fang asked her, not entirely awake yet.

"T-they say that I have to do this mission for them, but Fang, even if I was a brain dead blonde with zero IQ I could tell that it's suicide. But they say I have no choice, that I'm not allowed to go against orders, and that trying to would only end badly for me."

Fang froze at that admittance, she couldn't help it, but something about what Serah said scared her to the core, the kind of fear that Serah herself was feeling right now.

But she'd never let it show.

So with much trouble, she kept herself from stuttering as she asked, "What kind of mission?"

Biting her lip, the fear in her eyes intensifying, Serah answered with much stuttering, "I-infiltration, t-they want me to i-infiltrate Eden's Cocoon HQ. They say it's because of all the agents they thought to use for t-this mission I h-had the best skill set. But they want me to go completely alone, Fang, without any help, and t-that scares me to the core. I mean what if I get caught? I could get k-killed."

As Fang took in all that information Serah lost her fight with keeping her tears down and broke into sobs, leaving Fang's mind with a single thought.

_'Fuck you, deja vu.'_

Watching Serah continue to sob into her hands, Fang ventured to take a step closer, unsure of herself. Comforting was a long lost forte to her. But nevertheless she placed her hands on Serah shoulder and pulled the crying girl closer into an awkward embrace, cooing into her hair "it's going to be okay, just stop crying"

The comforting falling on deaf ears, Serah continued to sob, choking out over them "I don't care what they think. I'm not my sister, I can't do this."

Tightening her embrace, Fang just continued to hold her, telling her firmly at her past words "I know you're not your sister, so don't think your being compared to her, you never know what you can do unless you try, you'll only fail if you tell yourself you will."

Apart from praying that Serah wouldn't notice that that was her view more than anyone else, Fang also prayed to all the gods within the heavenly realm above that she was right.

...:...

That was an argument she knew she was going to lose even before she initiated it.

The top dogs wouldn't listen to a word she had to say about Serah's mission, they turned a deaf eye to everything she said. That was one thing in particular she hated about how they treated her over the past three years, ever since that fucking suicide mission they themselves had sent her on, they regarded her like she was clinically insane or something like that. It was as if they thought that every possible thing that she said was a twisted sanity-lacking piece of shit.

Blowing out a sigh as she got up from her position on the floor, Fang stretched her limbs and made a mental note to go find Serah, she had to inform her of the bad news. As much as she was loathe to do so, avoiding telling her was a stupid notion; such a thing would prove utterly useless. So finishing stretching out, she headed in the direction of Serah's room, moving through the countless numbers of agents as she made her way through the hallway.

This was one of the things she disliked the most of Pulse's Eden HQ, it always seemed that it was the most packed HQ out of all the HQs agent wise. She much preferred staying in safe houses, both for the fact that they frequently housed less people and that the executives rarely stayed there, so she didn't have to be living under the same roof as them. Weaving through the mass of people Fang eventually found her way to Serah's room where she proceeded to knock hard on the door to notify Serah of her presence.

Waiting for it to be opened, Fang leaned her back against the wall opposite the door until she heard a lock click and saw Serah's head peek out from inside the room. Spotting Fang by the side of the door, she cast a beseeching look over at her to which Fang shook her head, telling her with annoyance clear in her voice.

"Sorry but they don't hold my sanity in high regard, wouldn't listen to a word I said."

Flinching as if she was in pain, Serah backed off from the door and walked back inside her room, mumbling to herself "There's nothing we can do to stop this is there?"

Following her inside the room, Fang grabbed hold of the door and shut it behind her.

Taking firm stance to despairing Serah who had her back to her, twiddling her fingers, Fang told her with all the strength she could muster, "Now just because we can't do anything to stop this mission doesn't mean I'll let you come to harm"

Tilting her head so that she could view Fang, Serah offered a meek "But-"

"No buts" Fang cut her off "I thought I told you when I first met you that I'd go to any length to protect you, and it'll be a cold day in hell before I go back on that promise. I don't care what consequences I may provoke, it doesn't matter as long as you stay safe."

Keeping her eyes trained on Serah as the girl slowly walked over to her bed and sat on it, Fang watched on as the girl bit her lip and lay both hands in her lap.

"What did my sister ever do for you that made you so indebted to her that you'd do this for me?" Serah asked in a low voice. After the words left Serah's mouth the room went silent for a prolonged moment, during which Fang cast a look at over at the girl on the bed for a time, and leaned her back against the door.

"She saved my life," she answered eventually, a solemn expression overtaking her face, "and that's something I'd have to be a real scumbag to take lightly. The fact that if it wasn't for her I wouldn't be standing here today is something that makes me indebted to her more than I can ever say. But now since I can't do anything to help her in return, I vowed to myself that I would protect what mattered most to her."

Pausing, Fang, closed the distance between her and Serah and placed her hand on her shoulder and squeezed it, finishing her sentence. "Family."

Biting her lip again, Serah turned her head away from Fang's gaze and stared downwards, a solitary tear dripping off her chin. While Fang was someone she could never expect friendship from, she knew beyond everything else that no matter what Fang would keep that promise.

She would always protect her.

...:...

She knew it was bound to happen.

One way or another, Serah cover was going to be blown.

Serah's mission, just like it had been planned to, had gotten her closer to the inner core of the Cocoon corporation than any other spy had gotten before.

The same went with the information she was giving to Pulse about the inner working and plots of Cocoon, by the time her mission ended, she had given Pulse mountainous amounts of intel, more than any Pulsian spy that came before her could have hoped to gain after spending ten years in a Cocoon HQ.

But after four months of being undercover in Cocoon's HQ, one of the high ranking Cocoon agents became privy to Serah's status as a Pulsian spy and all hell broke loose. She managed to send a brief distress call back to Pulse HQ notifying them of this, only for the call to drop out abruptly and for the line to go flat.

Pulse took action immediately.

A group traced the call to define Serah's last known location while another contacted the spies they had positioned in the Cocoon Eden HQ. Most had no knowledge of Serah's plight, but they struck gold when they finally found a spy that was close enough to the core to at least be informed of it. He told them sternly that if Serah was to remain in the HQ must longer then the chance of her life being in immediate danger would no longer be a chance.

She would be dead.

Hearing this news, Fang offered to go to Serah's aid straight away. Hesitation had caused her great anguish in the past; she wouldn't make that mistake again.

While Pulse had been initially uncertain of letting her go, her knowledge of Cocoon's HQ and her own skills of concealment would prove to be invaluable to the success of a rescue mission.

So she set off after the girl she'd vowed to protect.

...:...

It was a period of only a few minutes that would remain with her for as long as she lived.

She broke in and began hunting out her target. After she sought out Serah's last known location it took her a minuscule amount of time to find the girl, her memory of the layout of the HQ being so clear in her mind that it was downright bizarre. She had skulked around the halls, avoiding any human contact with the random agent scattered about and made her way through the place so easily that it was laughable.

And soon enough she came upon a room from which she heard a man's gruff voice spewing venomous words of menace at an unknown person. A distant feeling of recognition spawning in her mind at the voice, she decided to tread closer to the room so she could peek inside.

Within, she found exactly what she was looking.

Serah, with no one else but Rosch holding her high against the back wall, dragging her hip length dyed snow white hair along with her. An all too real tremendous hatred burst forth from her very soul at the sight of the man, her lips curled upwards and without even having to think she pulled out her gun and aimed it high so that the barrel was directed at his head.

Taking a step forward, her boots made a distinctive sound on the hard floor, a noise that briefly distracted Rosch away from the girl he was tormenting only for him to hear the sound of Fang cocking her gun before he had set his eyes on her.

"I would let go of her you parasite infested roach," she hissed vehemently.

He dropped her instantly. And twisted around so he could look Fang in the face, wanting to confirm that she was really there and he wasn't just hearing things. To say he looked surprised when his eyes found her would be a colossal understatement, the man looked bat fuck astonished.

Giving, after all that shit that happened to her three years ago, he thought she was dead and six feet under.

"You..." he managed to get out eventually.

"Yeah, who'd think it'd be?" Fang spat malevolently, using the gun in her hands to point fleetingly down to the girl on the floor. "Now I'd just let that girl just there over here, and let us get out of here, you son of a bitch."

Staring only a moment longer, Rosch forcefully composed himself and shook his head. Anger flooding his face as he stared up at the women by the door, he pulled a knife from where it was stowed on his belt, grabbed Serah by the hem of her top and pulled her closer, meaning to press the blade to her neck.

But he never got the chance, Fang let her bullet fly, heading directly for his head.

...:...

Fang woke with a start.

Eyes wide open, she breathed in heavily, gripping tightly at the layers on her bed covers, her hands slick with sweat that dripped from her shaking form.

The dark of night still overwhelmed her small room, casting dark shadows over everything around her but she could not make a guess at the hour.

_'Why?'_ she thought.

Why did she have to relive that? Why did she have to relive memories of what she feared and hated every night? And why did her mind have to be so self-torturing in the first place?

Shaking her head as she lowered it into her hands, Fang felt a tear slide off her head and onto her palm, one that was followed by a flood of more. Quietly she sobbed, wishing with all her heart that these dreams would stop, they scared her like nothing else.

Why was it that she suffered like this? She didn't want to have these memories, she didn't want to live in a world that was an eternal inferno of fucking hell. She didn't want to be a part of this war. She wanted to live in the world that was blessedly unaware of its existence. Why couldn't she live blissfully in ignorance?

* * *

><p>The insult parasite infested roach was inspired by the fact that when I write Rosch without a capital in Microsoft word and it gets underlined in red, if I side click it, it gives me the options of changing it to either Rosch or roach.<p>

Also, and I don't know why I'm saying this but the term 'Bat fuck' is one of my all time favourite terms, I got it from uncyclopaedia, the content free encyclopaedia, which I highly suggest you look up as it's funny as hell, especially the kingdom hearts page.

I'm probably going blank on so many things I was going to write here but who really cares.

One of my friends has advised me to tell any Aussies who live in NSW to stay off the road from the 8th of July 2013 and onwards as that is her sixteenth birthday (E.g when she able to get her drivers license) and if your thinking of ignoring that message let me inform you just how dangerous this girl on the roads is, her brother doesn't understands roundabouts a lick and they share similar IQ, and her and a friend have spent half an hour in a year seven maths class room while their both year niners.

oh yeah I'm not kidding, she's an idiot.

Also for the love of all that is good and holy remember to give me a review.

And if there was anything that confused you in this chapter I suggest you do the same and I can explain it for you.

Sayonara for now

~Claire kreiss


	7. Agony

_The perfect Sunday morning activity; perving on hot Asian men._

_Ignore that last comment readers._

_Here finally is the seventh chapter for you, I apologise a million and one times that I haven't updated in so long but this chapter was excruciatingly hard to write, I will also apologise again that after so long without updating I've given you a short chapter, it's only three thousand words and my average lately has always been 6-8 thou._

_I'm still having some trouble and all that when it comes to writing, the plot of this story I find is actually rather easy to figure out when I put my mind too it but alas, my other XIII story is not of such a texture. I probably won't be writing that one for a time (Excluding the next chapter which hallelujah is actually plotted out) so mostly I'll just be writing this story right now (My KH one has taken the back seat seeing as not so many people read it, which gives me the chance to take up more time in bettering the chapter contents, also on that note, please read my KH story)_

**_Disclaimer: I do not own final fantasy, Square Enix does._**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Agony <strong>_

The golden rays of the setting sun wafted in through the spaces between the half closed blinds and settled themselves upon the floor to where they crawled up the wall to gilt off of a syringe filled with a translucent golden liquid held by a nameless girl no older than eighteen.

Tapping the side of the syringe twice with her pointer finger of her left hand, she hummed to herself, trying and failing to make her demeanour completely indifferent to the women on the bed. It was obvious that she didn't want to be here, but deep down she did feel a little worried, as little and small as the feeling was, it was nevertheless undeniably there when you looked into her eyes. She just hoped the women who lay before her half asleep wouldn't notice it.

Fat chance.

She was attuned to everything around her 24-7, even now when she was as tired as she was, one look up at her face and she'd see it, the chance of her missing it was one in a million.

Tapping the syringe one last time with her finger, the girl took a few steps closer to the bed, taking time to steel her mental state so that when she spoke it came out as if she was unaffected by the women's situation, even a mite bitchy, like it truly annoyed her to no end that she had been forced to come out here to help her.

Lowering the syringe, the light that had been reflecting on its surface fell from it and repositioned itself on the girls arm and the wall that lay behind her. Clearing the distance between her and the bed, the girl reached over and shook the women's shoulder to keep her from falling back asleep like she had been when she'd first came here.

"Fang" she said in a faked annoyed tone.

Fang, with her eyes still half closed, tilted her gaze upwards some in an effort to see the girl above her. The girl made sure to keep her head held higher than fang's limited gaze reached to prevent their eyes from meeting, she didn't want her to see the slight emotion in her eyes, she wanted Fang to think that she felt the same way her voice portrayed.

Bringing the syringe to a spot within Fang's view, she began muttering on in that same fake tone, sounding as if she was caught in reverie, but she was feigning that as well.

"You know Fang, when this happens you should really contact HQ, you should have had this enough times now to know that you can't kick it on your own. I'm not saying that sevarcasum helps you completely" she said with a gesture to the golden liquid contained with the syringe "not at all, but without it the chemical in your blood will keep on building up and you'll only get sicker and sicker and trust me if you let it come to that you're more likely to die than anything else"

"Perhaps that's what I want" Fang snapped out weakly, a response that made the girl in front of freeze for a second before she shook her head, her inner monologue scolded her for the reaction, telling herself that a death wish was something Fang had been holding close for a long time now. So why should it surprise her that if there was a chance of this illness killing her she'd take it. In fact she very well could have killed herself with it this time, had Nataliah not piped up about Fang being sick to the superiors.

But whether she sought death or not, the superiors would be furious if they lost an agent that a number of them considered their best, and would punish anyone brutally who failed to stop any suicide attempt she may make. So without much further hesitation, the girl reached down and took hold of Fang's right shoulder, which from her position of laying on her side was the only one visible to her and rubbed a thumb across it seeking out a particular spot. After some contemplation, she stuck the needle into Fang's upper arm and pushed down on the end of the syringe until all of liquid held within flowed out and into the women veins.

Sevarcasum, the golden liquid she'd inserted was a solution that was made by pulse with the intention of killing off chemical substances, like the one that existed in Fang's blood. When she had escaped from cocoon's clutches, she had been very sickly and her condition only worsened as time went on. It had taken awhile but eventually pulse had discovered a chemical in her blood stream, something that was narrowed down swiftly to be the cause of the illness.

After many test it still came as an unidentified substance to pulse, so it didn't take long to figure out how it'd gotten there. The chemical had obviously been a compound of cocoon creation, and either used as a device of torture, or for the even worse option of, and easily more deadly one when done by cocoon's hand.

Experimentation.

The experiments that went on in the shadows of cocoon were a notorious subject among pulse agents; it would be an understatement to say that fear of them was a motivation that pushed them to not get captured by cocoon. She knew from word of mouth that when serving cocoon Fang had been a test subject of the cocoon scientists, but the experiments had never been anything major, always going along the line of cybertronics.

Cocoon agents never unless by their own submission, received experiments that went beyond the realm of humane, but there was nothing stopping cocoon from doing it to the prisoners they held captive beneath their feet in chambers that emanated hell itself.

Lifting the syringe away from Fang's vicinity, the girl put an end to her train of thought and backed off slightly before turning on her heel. Dropping the emptied syringe into a small bag of hers, she picked up everything she had initially brought with her, and walked to the door with the intention of leaving without a word.

But Fang stopped her short by saying "you know Nickola, but if you want to try and lie to me, you're going to need to practice more. Your eyes aren't the only things that give away your emotions"

Nickola flinched rather visibly at that, finding that she'd been caught out all too easily, but with her inner monologue soon scolded herself for the reaction once again she straightened up and endeavoured to walk the rest of the length to the door. She didn't bother to question what exact body action had given herself away, right now she wished for nothing more than to leave this room as fast as she possibly could.

Twisting the knob, she opened the door to permit her entrance into the hallway, stepped though, and then closed the door shut behind her with a final thud, the sound of a lock soon following as it clicked into place.

'Why was it that nowadays Fang scared her so much?' Her inner monologue questioned as she walked one foot in front of the other down the hallway and further away from the room she just left. She used to be close to Fang once, and at the time the women had been a very social person, but that had disappeared with the going of time.

But not so long ago, she used to be her friend.

Struggling to move her tired limbs into a more comfortable position, Fang rested one arm over her eyes; the steady flow of gradually reducing sunlight coming in from the window was bugging her, not all so much, but ample amount to be a bother of sorts. At least now she could wait it out until sunset did its job in blotting it out as it came and went, as lifting an arm to close the half open blinds would be too much of a task for her at current.

Fang felt like her body was suffering from exhaustion like that of what you'd get for traversing a desert. Like whatever meek strength she possessed in her sickly state had drained away a little by little until it was all but gone. She could barely open her eyes right now; and lifting a single limb was comparably like lifting more than a tonne of weight.

She could only hope that the sevarcasum would soon take effect to ease the sickliness that ate at her body, knowing that it'd be a time till all the symptoms disappeared. But while they would continue to plague her for the next couple of days or so, at least their disappearing was a definite, while the existence of the sickness and its cause, was something that could never be undone by any means known to Fang. The chemical in her circulatory system always seemed to cling on despite all efforts made to kill it off completely. A bigger dose of sevarcasum might have a chance with but since it was not made with the intention of use on humans, too big a dose could pose great harm to her body.

But that wasn't something she concerned herself with; in fact she couldn't care less. It didn't matter to her that she'd be made to live out her life with the chemical in her blood, if fact she welcomed it. She hated the sickness it brought along with it with a passion yes, but the all too real chance of it killing her once it engulfed enough of her blood cells was something she oh so enjoyed. She'd found out a long time ago that the strength to kill herself by her own hand was something that would always elude her, no matter how her life disintegrated into hellfire and how much her mind screamed for that eternal darkness death would bestow her.

So she tried time and time again to let this sickness kill her, something she could easily have achieved that this time, if not for Nataliah. It wasn't that she hated the girl. But Fang could see herself developing some sort of dislike for her over this.

In truth she wished she hadn't been where she was when the tendrils of what she felt right now had taken a hold of her, she wished with all her being she had been here in her apartment or at least not in a place so open to the world, as long as it had been in public, Fang knew that knowledge of it would always come back to Nataliah and Pulse.

Gradually and with much hassle, Fang slid the arm that was resting over her eyes away from her face ever so slightly. Thankfully, in the time she'd it had there the light coming in from the window had dimmed down some, so it didn't annoy her like it had before.

Her gaze finding its way to the window in question, and what little of the outside world was to be seen, Fang Watched as two solitary birds fly away from view before letting her tired eyes close, deliberately refraining from letting herself fall into slumber. She kept her mind stayed active behind closed lids, with one thought after the other choosing to make themselves provident.

Thinking over some that had previously transgressed her mind, a new one surfaced in its depths, and made itself known.

The girl who had been here previously; Nickola Madeline.

Nickola, who at current had lived nought but 19 years, and had been cornered into taking the path of becoming an agent for Pulse at the tender age of 10, was someone who till four years ago had held Fang very close.

It seemed like eons ago to her now, but they had once been friends, good friends too, like many other had been to Fang. Of course after her ordeal with Cocoon, that had stopped but for the twelve odd months that Fang had served under Pulse beforehand, she had many friends.

Looking back on her memories of those times, Fang felt like for that instant her mind split in two. One side seeing them through perverse eyes, the other watching on as its counterpart found disgust with how the memories played out. Halting her train of thought just for that second, Fang couldn't stop that part of her mind slipping in the musing_ 'did it really disgust her so much that she used to be like that?". _But just like that the two halves melded back into one, and the two feeling created by each halve of disgust and shock at the previously mentioned feeling altered. With the shock evaporating into thin air and the disgust turning into pure hate.

Hate that the people who had once been her friends had gotten to live without the darks devils like the ones that inhabited to her mind, and that they'd never ever came close to experiencing terrors like the ones she had. So she found herself resenting their attempts to help her, and the efforts they made to comfort her about a subject they could never comprehend without knowing the pain of it themselves.

Oh how she had hated that, and to top it off, during it all they'd showed to her something they masked as sympathy, but Fang saw through that façade from the start. It was pity they felt. And pity as it was, was something she'd never had the ability to stomach, and it'd been that way for as long as Fang could remember. Had it been true sympathy they'd felt when they reached out a hand to help her, then maybe, just, maybe Fang would have flicked an eye at their attempts to reach her.

But she didn't see herself giving them as much as the time of day under even those circumstances, back then or today.

Because there was always that hate to take into account, the feeling that always sparked into an inferno whenever anyone tried to help her. Fang didn't know exactly why that was so, why she couldn't stand for people wanting to comfort her. It certainly wasn't pride that barred her taking it, because just wasn't the kind of person that who would deny someone the right to offer their help to her because she was too proud to accept it, thought she knew many men who were.

No, it was how she thought them naïve, to try and comprehend a subject that you can't know the full pain of unless you've felt it yourself, least of all to try and help her through the terrors that haunted her mind because of it.

They didn't know, they couldn't know. They had no idea what it was like to live your days stalked by memories of unspeakable horrors, and how it felt to be forced to deal with nightmare each night that did nothing but remind you about how you suffered.

Every night when her head hit the pillow she saw it, that accursed dark room that held within its confines no light and no hope. A place a that drained away her lust for life one drop at a time until the pain it bequeathed to her made her mind shatter into a million pieces and her whole being scream for a release.

To scream for death.

Life after it had never seemed like an option, she thought she was going to die there, slowly and agonisingly painfully, but a death it would be. So for herself to survive, let alone escape from there without dying in the process, was something she never made plans for, seeing as her escape had been something of a spur of a moment thing. Fang wasn't even sure why she had done it, perhaps it had been nothing more than not wanting for her death to be at cocoons hand, a want to end the torment, for however long she could.

Yet she still wanted to die, there was no stop to that desire. But she didn't die; she lived on and was made to live with the pain.

Why didn't she die?

She wanted to, more than anything else she wanted to die, and that was something that was if nothing, more emphasised today.

Her mind might have its ways of keeping the truth away from her view, with all its metal illnesses and disorders. But when it got down to it, Fang didn't want to live with her mind twisted as it was. Too engulfed with paranoia to see that the people around her were not out there to do nothing but hurt her, and that when they offered her help it was genuine, not faked, even if some of the feeling sparking it may have. Too enveloped with severe depression to see the light of the world, forever locking her up in darkness where there was nothing but sadness of no hope for the future, causing her to want for nothing else but the end. And so many others problems that warped her so that she was unrecognisable from the women she used to be. Unsocial, distrustful, sad and perpetually angry at everyone around her. The light that used to exist in her eyes long gone, replaced by the tell-tale eyes of a killer, the eyes of someone who was nothing but a sad excuse for a person.

And it was all because of her incarceration by Cocoon, where she experienced all the anguish that Cocoon could impart to her till it was too much to take. She was the broken person she was today because of that.

It was all because of those seven months spent in that torture chamber that could be summed up as nothing less than pain of the highest degree.

Nothing less than agony.

* * *

><p><em>Agony is one of my all-time favourite ways to say pain.<em>

_Sorry again for the short chapter, it was originally going to be longer but then I realise that the thing I was going to put in it that would make it longer was both extremely hard to work into the chapter and fitted better in one of the upcoming chapter, if I remember right its fifteen or something around then._

_Also just so you know, but I'm fixing up the first three chapters that were unedited, it might be a bit before I post the fixed up versions of them up here because I'm doing this with four other un-betaed chapters and I have and I told my beta she has no time limit with them but your free to go look at them when I'm done with them. Since this story has completely changed from how it originally was when I first started writing (I'm talking about fangs metal problems not the plotline) it might be a good idea to go back and look at the edited versions when I fix up the consistency of this story._


	8. Unexpected

_Hello again readers, here is the eighth chapter for you all._

_This chapter marks the first time I've written a chapter for one of my stories twice in a roll, because till now I've always gone in a loop while writing them. I hope giving you two chapters in a row somewhat apologises for me not updating in so long._

_Just a warning though, my beta hasn't really been up to betaing lately so this chapter has been proof read by my sister who isn't as good as spotting grammar mistakes as my beta is, so there may be one or two mistakes that she may of missed in the chapter._

**_Disclaimer: I do not own final fantasy XIII, Square Enix does._**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Unexpected<strong>_

Laying her head down on the cold wooden surface of the window pane, Fang stared up at the drab grey sky laden with dully coloured clouds that moved sluggishly across what would have been in other circumstances a blue expanse.

A couple of days had come and gone since Nicola had stepped foot in her apartment and the symptoms of her sickness had disappeared one after the other until none of them continued to plague her.

Pulse had ordered her to get back to her usual duties revolving around this mission, and having no longer any excuse to do otherwise, that's just what Fang would be made to do. Though wholeheartedly, Fang felt like keeping Topaz at arm's length right now, as of late the girl had been too informed of her problems then she would have liked. And that left Fang open to the paranoid feeling that she might divulge some of what she knew to her friends, something Fang equally wholeheartedly didn't want to happen. She would prefer it if as little as possible people became privy to the true magnitude of her problems, as keeping the existence of them to herself had never been conceivable from the start.

Lifting her chin off the window pane, Fang shifted her position from where she sat on her bed and uncrossed her legs. In a manner opposite of elegant, she slid her body around from facing the wall to the open space on the left side of her bed where it became possible for her to get off the bed all together. Standing up from the wooden structure she walked over to a pile of what could have very well been rubble from the state Fang had left the assorted pieces of clothing and what not in. From the pile she picked up a black leather jacket and slid her arms into it with a lithe action.

Nataliah had texted her a couple of minutes ago to inform her that the car was parked just around the bend from the apartment complex, but she hadn't bothered go to it just yet. If she didn't feel that inclined to meet with the girl right now then why should she hurry, she'd take as much time as she wanted to collect her things, Nataliah always arrived some time before it was really a need to head off anyway.

Before Fang walked out the door, she made sure to pick up the black shoulder bag she always took with her whenever she had to go to the school and swung it onto her shoulder. Fixing up the jacket so that it sat right, Fang approached the door and reached out a hand to clasp the doorknob, giving it a rough twist to the left and opening it.

Stepping into the hallway, she walked in the directions of the elevator at a slow pace, intending to make the time Nataliah had to wait for her all the longer.

...:...

Swinging her bag onto her back, Topaz walked out of her room and into the hallway of the exceedingly tidy apartment. Anna wasn't there at the moment and had left her to get herself to the bus stop by herself, though that didn't bother her too much as the bus stop was only a block or two away. What mattered more to her was exactly where Anna had gotten herself off to, she hadn't spoken a single word of where she was going, she'd said nothing to her then the notification that she was leaving. But as to where that was Topaz had no idea.

Ending the train of thought, Topaz walked to the kitchen to see what she could find to have as her lunch. There wasn't much to eat considering it was the end of the week and Anna always went shopping at the start of the week, but it was enough to get together something decent to eat. Placing the food in her bag, she replaced the bag on her back and headed to the door. Doing a mental double check that she had everything for the day, she pulled the door open and let herself out into the hallway. Locking the door behind, she dropped the key into her pocket and began to walk down the hallway.

The wait for the elevators was unusually long and she was near giving up the wait and seriously thinking of taking the stairs when the two shining doors glided open in front of her. Walking inside the metal structure, Topaz pressed the button for the ground floor and waited once more as the elevator lowered one floor after the other until it came to an eventual stop as it met the ground floor.

Door sliding open, Topaz walked away from the elevator and in the direction of the automatic doors at the apartment buildings entrance. Feeling the rush of cold wind hit her as she stepped outside, Topaz breathed in the fresh morning air and continued on to her bus stop.

It wasn't long before she rounded the cornered to the street that housed her bus stop, where she only managed to walk a few steps before Lebreau latched onto her suddenly from behind. Failing to hold in a yelp she jumped in fright at the girl's abrupt appearance, doing her best to shake her off, something which Lebreau didn't seem all too keen on letting her do. Topaz yelled at her in frustration "Lebreau for the love of the goddess with you get off me"

Giggling to herself, Lebreau released the hold she had on Topaz, "Sorry, but I get the funniest reactions out of you, it was too tempting."

Pouting, Topaz complained "Too you, it isn't to me when you pull stunts like that."

"I think your reactions have already taught me that Topaz, so I don't think what you have to say to me will make me stop anytime soon."

Pouting again, Topaz turned on her heel and began walking closer to the bus stop and away from her friend. Behind her she could hear Lebreau speak words of apology that were, unfortunately for the girl, too filled with laughter for Topaz to believe them. Watching in the corner of her eye as Lebreau caught up to her, a smile snuck its way onto her face.

"I'm really sorry Topaz, honest!" Lebreau whined beside her.

"Try saying it with a straight face and maybe I'll believe you." Topaz told her with a badly hidden laugh in her voice, but soon she found herself unable to hold in giggles and she started laughing along with her friend.

Laughing between themselves, Topaz and Lebreau pulled up alongside the bus stop. There were a number of other kids waiting there for the bus that was yet to come but being some of the less than liked members of the school they made sure to stay out of their way. While waiting, the two of them held a conversation with foundations of complete and utter nonsense, something that became apparent to the kids around them when a certain word of two from it reached their ears, making them turn their heads to the two girls in sheer confusion at what they were hearing.

The going of the minutes soon found the bus stopping by them to pick them up and take them to school. Waiting as a group of other students clambered on to the bus before her, an oddity caught Topaz's eye and made her stop before she took another step forward.

From the alleyway right by the bus stop a small dark shape shot out and darted across her path before slipping under the bus and out of sight.

Partially ignoring the sight, Topaz walked forward and stepped up onto the bus. It was only as she sat down and took her seat next to Lebreau did her mind make sense of what it had just seen moments ago.

It was a black cat.

...:...

Ignoring Nataliah had become a norm to Fang over the past few days, and today proved no different. The entire drive to the school passed in near complete silence, without her speaking a word. She could feel Nataliah staring at her throughout the whole thing, but the emotion that pushed the girl to such actions was one that Fang couldn't quite decipher.

When the car pulled up into a parking space within the vicinity of the school, Fang opened the car door and got out without a semblance of a goodbye to any of the vehicle's occupants. And she was determined to walk away from it and on towards the looming structure of the school gates with nary a glance behind her.

There were considerably less students than usual around and within the refines of the school, with it being the last day before the holidays and most students finding no reason in going to school with most of the topics they had been doing in class already finished, but some still came. Not that it really mattered to Fang any, she just cared that it meant less students to bother her than usual.

She sought out a place for a brief moment of solitary before Serah and her friends inevitably saw her and made their best attempt to bring her into a conversation when she walked through the gates. Through lately it had really begun to sink in for them that that was becoming an increasingly hard task to achieve.

But to her own bad luck, it wasn't long before they did find her and attempt to do exactly what she'd thought they would, but it was equally as short a time that the bell rang across the school premises signalling that it was time for roll call.

In the end she ended up spending both of her first periods being hampered by Serah and Lebreau to talk with them about subjects she had little or no interest in, but she made it obvious to them that she wasn't in the mood and would prefer to spend the class silent.

By the time the recess bell rang she was already fed up with the people around her, and wanted nothing else than some time to herself.

Sitting down amongst the group of trees that they always sat by to keep the other students at distance, Fang lay herself down on the dry grass that was withering away in the heat of the sun. It wasn't quite summer yet, but it had been rather hot over the past few days, and the grass hadn't been in good condition beforehand anyway.

Across from her she sensed the others sitting down, she supposed they were talking to her, throwing a couple of sentences and that her way every now and then, but her mind wasn't necessarily focused on her current area, so their words may well of been the wind blowing casually past her ears. Her gaze was directed at the luminescent blue sky, that had seemingly cleared up since the its drab appearance that it had had in the morning, but there were still some clouds misplaced along its expanse. There was nothing in particular that she thought of at length, one thing would dance through her mind only to slide away and be replaced by another.

Recess passed by around her, her ears long having long ceased to pick up the sounds of the others calling out to her. She didn't eat, she wasn't all that sure why, but she just stayed where she was for all of the 40 minutes of the recess, unmoving and doing nothing.

The minutes ticked by one after the other, the allotted time given to the students as a break off classes becoming smaller and smaller. If she was any bit more aware of her surroundings, she may have felt the looks Serah and the rest sent her way, but as far away as she was, they were never even thought to exist.

When the recess bell rang at last the majority of the small group left, but Fang stalled her departure. She waited until the rest of them were gone, before lifting herself off the ground and following their lead. Brushing the strands of dry grass that had stuck themselves to the back of her skirt off the bright blue fabric, she grabbed hold of her bag that she had abandoned on the ground nearly an hour before and swung it onto her shoulder.

In the minutes following she decided not to go back to class, instead opting to stay out of the buildings and out in the open, albeit away from any wondering teacher's view. After giving the school a quick look over she found a small spot a little on the close side to the oval, a place that was lucky for her, away from immediate sight. To be exact it was at the back of the hospitality building, which front faced up to the school and its back faced the oval, or more specifically the fence that surrounded it. She sat down there and laid her back up against the closest surface, the expanse of brick that made up the building.

Closing her eyes, she listened to the slight wind as it flowed past her, feeling its gentle force caress her skin. Silence continued on for some time, but eventually the sound of footsteps broke what had been to Fang a relaxing difference from the perpetual mayhem that had been sitting through classes with the idiot's that attended this school.

At first she thought they may have been made by a teacher walking past, but that guess was quickly pushed aside when she picked up to the fact that the footsteps were steadily getting louder, meaning that whoever it was were walking towards her. But her position was a little too out of the way to be viewed from the places that the teachers walked through so she was next to sure that the owner of the footsteps was a student. Except that when the person in question drew close to her and spoke up, it was the last person she had thought it to be.

"Wouldn't happen to be able to ask what you're doing exactly Atla?"

Jolting forward in surprise, a movement that took her back away from the wall Fang twisted her head around to see the person who had spoken the words. Seeing with her own eyes that she had indeed guessed right as to whom the voice belonged to, she said to him.

"I could ask you the same thing."

Rubbing the back of his neck, Snow walked closer to her, closing what little distance lay between them and stopped by her side "Can't say I have much of an answer for you about that, guess I was just curious bout what was up with you today, so I decided once I realised you were not in class to go look for you."

Directing her eyes down to the ground, Fang resumed her position of laying her back against the brick wall that spanned across behind her. "That all? Figured it may have been a little more than just plain curiosity."

While Fang watched him sit down next to her out of the corner of her eye, he shot down her past words, stating "It wasn't just plan curiosity, there's more to it than that."

"Like what?" Fang interjected before he could finish his sentence.

"like what I know about you from what Topaz has told me, it may be curiosity I have about why you're so out of it today, but it was worry that made me want to go look for you. I could hardly believe what Topaz was telling me when she told just how bad you really were in the head but when I sit back and take a good look at you it's becoming clearer and clearer that what she told me is true. It blows my mind how we never noticed it before, you really had as going that you just didn't like talking much and that was all"

Fang snapped her eyes to him as he voiced the first sentence, but it took til the last word for Snow to sight the abruptly sparked anger that had burst into a flame behind her eyes. Momentarily too stunned to speak once he saw the look, he didn't manage to get in another word before Fang shot out fiercely.

"So I see blondie wasn't so much as inclined to keep my secrets a secret then?" Looks like she was right to feel paranoid.

Getting a grasp on his words again, snow quickly replied back to her with a hand gesture to his chest "Hey if you want to blame anyone for me knowing blame me, I'm the one that made her tell me!"

"I will then!" Fang retorted quickly with venom.

Slightly taken aback by the swift response, Snow bit down on his lip but powered through nonetheless "Going back to what Topaz told me, I got to ask you, but how did you get so bad, I mean how could you let yourself get so bad?"

"If you're going to ask me something like that then you're just naïve, I could give you a million answers to that one question, each of them enough reason for all of my problems. There are many things that could of happened to me in this shithole of a world to make me so fucked up."

Trying not to show his surprise at the answer, Snow shot back "Give me one then."

Swerving her gaze to face him speedily, she let a haunted laugh escape her lips "Someone tried to kill me." she answered him honestly, drawing out each syllable for emphasis.

Stunned to silence, Snow kept his eyes trained on Fang for over a minute before he found the ability to speak once more "What!?" he said in sheer disbelief.

Disregarding his surprise, Fang shrugged off the look he was giving and expanded on her original statement "Someone tried to kill me, nice and slowly too, and oh so agonizingly painfully. So Mister hero, is that enough reason for you I wonder? Enough to make my depression, paranoia and my horrendously horrible drug addiction that is slowly killing me seem somewhat with justification?"

"D-drug addiction?" Snow stuttered out, obviously not being aware of that one bit of information.

"Oh didn't blondie tell you about it?" Fang asked him, with an oddly placed gleeful tone "Good to see that she was at least partly good on keeping my secrets, but I'm surprised she didn't speak of it to you, I thought of all things that it would be a topic she would have divulged to you, as I was high off my mind when she came to my apartment."

Was it bad that she was enjoying messing with Snow as much as she was? It probably was, but it wasn't like she could give a shit.

Flashing him a smile that showed off the same gleeful feeling that her tone had portrayed, she added on "If you're wondering why exactly I have such a bad drug addition, I guess I just like the feeling of being, for lack of a better word, not there"

Fang was about of move from her spot and get up and walk away, leaving the stunned Snow behind with the information that his mind could hardly digest, but she was stopped when he clasped a hand around her forearm.

"Wait!"

"What?" she said with unintended malice.

"Why?" He asked her "Why resort to that? You should know that there are so much better ways to deal with things like this than that!"

"Hn." Letting what would seem to Snow a misplaced smirk onto her face, Fang answered him "You realise Snow that to my mind other ways to me means suicide and suicide alone, there is nothing else."

Still with his hand grasped around her arm, Snow shook his head "But can't you see that you have your whole life ahead of you? Why is it that that is all you think of, there is so much potential your life could have! Why even think of cutting it short while you're still so young!?"

Snapping her eyes to his fiercely, Fang spat at him viciously "If you think that then you are nothing but naïve, I stuck around you guys sheerly for the sake of a façade, you barely know me, you have no idea who I am or what my life is like, you have no right to tell me that!"

Opening his mouth to protest some more, Snow found that no words came to his lips preventing him from saying anything further.

Breaking off his grasp on her arm, Fang stood up angrily and stalked away, meaning to leave Snow behind her.

The words he forced out only managed to briefly halt her departure, "Isn't there anything you see in this life, anything you wish to do?"

Stopping her walk to think over his question, Fang answered him with something she had no doubt he would of think a dark joke, "You know what, I certainly wouldn't mind killing Rosch"

Taking up her stride once more, she was interrupted again by the irritating ring of her mobile phone from her jacket pocket. Cursing under her breathe at the interruption, she fished into her jacket for the phone, taking note that that precise ring had been the one Lebreau had programed into it when she had stolen it in boredom one day to signal herself texting Fang.

It was out of nothing more than curiosity that Fang picked up the phone, simply wanting to know why Lebreau would be texting her now when she was in class.

Needless to say, when she took hold of the phone and read the message, it wasn't what she had ever thought it would be, not in the least. Staring at the message unbelieving, whispers of thoughts in her mind reminded her of the times she had been told of a shadow agent of this case.

_'Fang I would get over to D25 if I were you, times up for Serah's safety here, cocoons going for her'_

* * *

><p><em>My problem with rambling is going to stop me from saying anything about the content of this chapter.<em>

_The song Gee by south Korean group Girls generation came on while Fang and Snow's argument was taking place. I'm aware that there may be a lot of people out who have no idea who they are or what that song is, but to put it at an understatement, Gee would have to be one of the most sickeningly bubblegum pop songs I have every heard, so can't say it was very fitting for that moment._

_Unrelated but D25 is my history classroom, I'm not overly sure why that it is having a cameo in this story, but in my head the classroom Lebreau and Serah were in looked like my history classroom, maybe a little smaller but my history classroom all the same. Though it also may have been my history classroom from last year, D23._

_Not quite sure why I just told you that but I did._

_Please review, I'd love you for it._


	9. Hell's doors creak open

Hello my reader here is the ninth chapter of ignorance for you. Sorry it's been a while since I last updated but I got really distracted, namely by reading the whole of Inuyasha in two weeks. So sorry about that.

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Final fantasy Square Enix does.**_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Hell's doors creak open<strong>_

Staring at the message in disbelief, Fang gripped the phone tighter in her hands.

It told her that what she had been dreading for so long was finally going ahead. Serah's time of safety here was over and Cocoon was making their move. And it had been sent from Lebreau no less, the last person in the world Fang would have placed as a Pulsian shadow agent.

Staring at the message only a moment longer, Fang deposited the phone back in her jacket pocket hastily and set off away from the hospitality block, as she had been doing before the ringing of her phone disrupted her.

Behind her, Snow watched her read the message and replace the phone back in her pocket. Watching also as an unexplained sense of urgency overtook her movements thereafter as she walked away. Confused by the new emotion fuelling her, he made to go after Fang but the sound of his loud footsteps quickly reached her ears, and forewarned of his approach, she made sure to stop him in his tracks

Halting, Fang twisted around to look him in the eyes and told him firmly "Don't you dare think of following me!" Then twisted back around and continued on.

Before she was out of Snow's sights he shouted over to her retreating figure "Wait, what was that text you got?"

"None of your business." She spat savagely.

Leaving Snow behind her, Fang climbed the small set of stairs that ran parallel to the right side of the science block and walked onwards. Now that she tried to, she could hear yells coming from D block, the place where she knew Serah to be located. They were gruff voices, the kind that certainly didn't belong in a school like this last time she checked.

Turning a corner Fang spotted D block up ahead. Outside the main doors there were five people, they were dressed like normal students but the guns in their hands revealed that to be pretence. It came to Fang that they were Cocoon agents, most likely the Cocoon scouters who were stationed in this school to look for new agents.

Treading towards them with deliberate steps, Fang was halted on her way by a whimpering voice that belonged to an older woman.

"Miss you're only a student aren't you? I wouldn't go over there if I were you; those people have guns on them. I don't know what's going on here but it certainly can't be good, if you're smart I'd go and hide."

Turning her head so that she could spy the woman who had spoken to her, Fang saw that the speaker had been one of the schools teachers. She was an aging woman with greying hair that had been hiding in the open doorway of the science block. Her position made it that she was out of sight of the cocoon scouters, but that they not out of hers.

Her poorly chosen words made Fang want to laugh. She didn't of course, but that didn't stop a smile from spreading across her face. To just about anyone in this school right her words would have made perfect sense, but then, they weren't her.

Flashing the elderly women the dark smile that already rested upon her face, Fang told her "Well actually for your information despite my appearance, I'm not a student. I'm a lot like those kids you see up there; I'm a Pulsian shadow agent. The difference being that those kids work for Cocoon."

Facing away from the teacher so that the kids were in her sight once more, Fang drew a handgun from where she had hidden it on the underside of her skirt, and began walking in the direction of the agents. And in a single practiced movement lifted it high and aimed to kill "You see those kids have a task to fulfil here, one that I'm not inclined to let them complete."

Without giving it a thought she let off a round of bullets. Two of the kids went down with a bullet through the head, the others through the chest. All of them went down, crumpling to the ground like broken dolls.

Lowering her gun Fang flicked her head over to the elderly teacher now staring at her horrified "Their naivety to not put up a sentry is what cost them their lives." She said with a disturbing air of indifference to the act she had just committed, revelling in how it made the teacher even more disturbed at how she had killed the kids so thoughtlessly.

The look the teacher gave her did nothing particular to her mood, spectators viewing her as a monster was something that had long since stopped affecting her. Now she was just numb. And seeing Snow, who had been drawn to the scene by the noise, crouching down in the grassy area by the side of the science block wasn't going to change that view any more than the teachers looks had.

Striding past Snow, Fang walked up to the doors of D block. Inside she could see three other Cocoon agents, all of who stood by the doors of D25 with guns poised. Readying her own, she stepped inside with every intention that within the next few moments she would end their lives.

...:...

She didn't know what had happened. One moment the class had been going along like always with nothing out of the norm. But then this strange looking guy with white hair and bizarre looking tattoos down the length of his arms had come up to the door, and very jovially told Mr Rosch something about the Cocoon corporation. She didn't catch what exactly it was he had said but whatever it was it had a profound on Mr Rosch. Beside her she also noticed Lebreau tense up and pull out her phone, but at the time she hadn't bothered to question why.

Unlike the first time, the next words that the strange white haired man's said came out loud and clear. He laughed, a creepy sound coming from him and lifted his arm to point right at her "That's the girl alright." he said finding something about the situation amusing, but she couldn't say what it was, as she didn't even know what the situation was. Whatever in the world was going on, it was beyond her.

Distracted as she was by the white haired man and his confusing words she failed to notice Rosch walking towards her until he was right upon her. Grabbing her by her collar Rosch pulled her forcibly from her chair, away from her desk and back to the front of the class with him.

"Topaz!" Lebreau yelled as she was forced to jump up from her own desk so that she could dodge Topaz's chair as it fell.

Sending her friend a frightened look Topaz tried in vain to struggle out of Rosch's grip "What's going on?" she asked him in confusion, unsure if he'd give her an answer.

The amused smile that spread across his face her did nothing to relieve that confusion "So they really did erase your memory then, how foolish. Did they really think that that was going to trick us and make you fall under the radar?"

_'What?'_ Topaz thought, what did he mean they erased her memory. What was going here? What in the world was he talking about?

Hearing a laugh coming from the other side of the room, Topaz did the best she could to look around at who was creating the sound under Rosch's restraint. It was the white haired man, chuckling at the class that had now begun to gather and cower at the back of the room under the cover of the tables.

Because he was pointing a gun at them.

He was waving it around to every member of the class, who in turn would try as hard as they could to conceal themselves from him and the loaded firearm. Still laughing he twisted his head over to look at Rosch "Can I kill some, please?" he asked drawing out the last syllable gleefully.

"Do what you want, she's the only one we need" Rosch answered him indifferently. Getting a better grip on Topaz's top as he prepared to leave the room.

Starring up at the man horror-struck of what he had just permitted, Topaz's eyes swerved back to look at the petrified class. Thanking her lucky stars that only one of her friends had been unfortunate enough to be in this class with her. On that note, she made a point of seeking out Lebreau in the pack of frightened teenagers. When her gaze did find the girl she was shocked to find that there wasn't an ounce of fear on her face. That registered to her as odd, because, how could she not be afraid when forced into a corner like the one she was in now?

Topaz was given no time to question the oddity as the sound of gunshots came from somewhere outside of D block and her concentration was directed elsewhere.

Snapping his head to face the door, Rosch gripped her shirt ever tighter in his hand "Seems like Pulse has finally acted. I would have thought that they would have had sooner, seeing as they have 24-7 surveillance on you."

Looking up at the man again without a clue as to what he was talking about, Topaz's attention was ripped away from him when more gun shots sounded off, this time just outside the door. The three people that she had barely noticed were there at all until now dropped limp to the ground. And that over one of their bodies stood Atla, a handgun hanging loose in her hand.

The Atla's gaze was locked with the body of the poor soul she'd just shot, but it soon worked its way over to Rosch and the figure of Topaz who he had in his grasp. Topaz saw anger in her eyes, and hate, hate like she'd never seen before.

Looking once again back to Rosch, Topaz tried to discern if he knew her, but there was no recognition on his face. Glancing back over to Atla she watched as the girl walked closer, lent her shoulder up against the doorframe and used the moment of ceased activity to reload her gun in a well-practiced movement. Never once did she look away from Rosch's face.

"Are you all?" Rosch asked her "I would have thought that Pulse would value this girl a little more to have more people stationed to look after her."

"Are you that naïve" Atla spoke up, tone enveloped in menace. Showing in every way just how much she hated the man she held gazes with.

As she took her first steps into the room, the white haired man turned away from tormenting the class and he raised his gun at her. Unaffected she kept on walking closer to Rosch one step at a time. The false façade she had kept up for so began to fall away and as she spoke her real accented voice began to shine through more and more as each syllable was spoken until not a shred of the faked voice remained.

"Do you really think that Pulse would just put anyone in charge of looking out for someone as important to them as her" stopping just inches away from Rosch's face, Atla said the last words with every bit of malice she could muster "you parasite infested roach."

Besides her, Topaz felt Rosch go rigid, and at last she saw his face flood with recognition of who the person who stood before him was.

That was when Topaz saw the white haired man take steps towards them as well and place his gun point blank against Atla's head. Gasping at the sight of it, she tried to say something to Atla only for Rosch to cover her mouth with his hand suddenly and pull her in closer to him to restrain her movements further.

Because of her close proximity to him, Topaz could clearly make out the sounds of the man's breathes as he sucked them in. He dragged each one in shakily and the pace of his heart had quickened noticeably from its normal rate. Finding that strange she tilted her head upwards to stare at him as much as her position allowed. The expression Topaz saw on his face wasn't one she'd ever seen there before. It was one of fear. Rosch was scared, really scared. But why?

Was the answer the girl who now stood stationary in front of him? Even with a gun to her head Atla didn't make a move to step away from Rosch and her. Her only movement was to tilt her head slightly to the side and she flash Rosch a smirk that was laced with dark intentions, promising the man she was glaring at unspeakable pain.

There was insanity in her eyes, Topaz thought. Insanity not unlike the kind that decorated the white haired man's eyes as he laughed as he pressed his gun into the back of Atla's head.

It was of course then, that Topaz saw that it had been a mistake to put his gun so close to her.

Dropping her smirk, Atla finally broke her eyes away from Rosch. Before either of them had the chance to react, she twisted around and elbowed the white haired man's arm, making him drop his gun which she then caught and threw into the group of students at the back of the room. Startled by the sudden action, he wasn't prepared for when Atla next kneed him in the stomach, tripping him over backwards and shot him in the head.

Flinching as the gun sounded, Topaz scrunched her body. Through half closed eyelids she watched helplessly as Rosch brought out a gun from where ever the hell he had stashed it and aimed it at Atla while her back was still turned. Topaz tried to yell a warning to the girl, only for the need of it be made redundant as another gun went off. Slowly, she felt Rosch's grip on her slacken until his hand unclasped her shirt and he fell to the floor.

Starring at the man who now lied limp on the ground in shock, Topaz straightened out and quickly let her eyes wander over the room.

Atla was still standing over the white haired man, who now had a sizably hole in his head. That she had expected to see, but what she hadn't been was that among the group of students in the back of the room was Lebreau with a gun in her hands. The same one she had used to shoot Rosch.

Starring at her friend astounded, a question popped into her head

_'Had Atla thrown the gun in there purposely for her to pick it up?'_

The question was answered for her it turned out, as Rosch weak voice drifted up from down on the floor "So there wasn't only one Pulsian agent here then."

"Got that right." Alta remarked as she walked closer to Rosch's downed form. Grabbing Topaz by the shoulder, she aimed her gun at Rosch "You would do good not to be so naïve bastard." Flashing him another dark smirk, she added "Oh and this time Rosch, do me a favour and stay dead."

She let off seven of bullets into the man's body for good measure.

Bringing the gun back to her side, she pulled on Topaz's arm and pulled her to the door with her where Lebreau was already waiting.

"Coast is clear." Lebreau told them both as they neared her.

About to leave the room behind them, Rosch's ever more feeble voice made Atla stop in her tracks.

"I guessed that I should have expected this from that harlot's lover."

Visibly steeling herself against turning back to face him, Atla clenched her fist. To Topaz or any other of the room's occupants, Rosch's words made no sense, but for her, it seemed she knew exactly what he meant.

"Sorry to say, but that was a common misconception. Light was not my lover." Then more quietly she added with a quick flick of her gaze to his direction "but while we're on that subject, I was your wife's."

From where she was standing Topaz watched as Rosch's face contorted in anger at Atla's response. Though there were many questions in her mind that she felt she needed to ask in regards to their exchange, she wasn't given the time to ask them. As Atla was quick to grab her arm and lead her away from the classroom.

Finding herself faced with the indifferent Atla walking ahead of her with a firm grip on her wrist and Lebreau walking behind them, Topaz was defenceless against being caught in their exchange of words.

"What was he talking about?" Lebreau asked, as confused by what Rosch had said as Topaz was.

"It's none of your business." Atla told her harshly "He was just trying to get me to waste more of my bullets on him."

Stopping it there before it could evolve into any more conversation, Atla dragged Topaz along behind her, intending to take her through D block, and then to the top of the school and on to the exit. But overwhelmed by what was going on around her, Topaz fought against her grasp, snapping at her "Wait!" she begged "What's going on here, can someone please explain it to me!"

Walking from behind her so that she stood by her side, Lebreau placed a hand on her shoulders and told her gently "I'm sorry but we don't have the time to explain it here. Just bear with us and stick to Fang's side. So long as you do that you'll be okay."

Every fibre in her body rebelled against Lebreau's words but common sense prevailed and instilled in her that she was clearly in danger, and would do good to do as the people who knew what was going on told her to. So eventually she let Atla pull her along, and fell silent. What had been told to her in the last couple of minutes didn't satisfy her want to know what was going on, it only amplified it. Her annoyance at it all even made it that her mind had barely noticed Lebreau just called Atla Fang. She guessed that that was probably her real name, seeing as after all that had just taken place she hardly thought that Atla was her real one. So did that mean that Lebreau wasn't the real name of the girl who stood by her side either, right now she could do nothing but contemplate it.

Distracted by her turbulent thoughts that swirled around her head, she barely detected Atla asking Lebreau if she had contacted Pulse about what had happened. A question to which Lebreau had answered yes, and that someone had already been sent here to pick them up.

The path they led her through the school was occasionally hampered by what Topaz now perceived as someone from Cocoon, but they were always quickly shot by Atla, and for the most part, killed. Her ability to kill without thought was something truly unnerving to Topaz but she knew that this was certainly not the right to time say anything about it.

Reaching the gates, Topaz saw a black sedan waiting for them right outside the school's bounds.

Stepping through the school gate for what was most likely going to be the last time she ever would, Topaz let Atla push her along closer to the car. Before entering it Atla whispered one last thing into her ear. It sent shivers down her spine.

"Welcome back to hell."

* * *

><p>It scares me that Fang can kill people so easily when she doesn't even know who they are, because of that within the first page of writing people were already dead.<p>

Going off serious subjects now but when I got my sister to upload this document onto my account for me it was easy to know which document it was, just had to look for the one called "pie". That is why you don't trust my sister with your documents, it was funny though.

Also before I go there's something I want to say.

Last time I updated I did a double update but even after so long between the update I received no reviews except from a friend of mine who always gives me a review because it is common courtesy to give me a review as I'll always give one to her. I have said before that I have been in a real slump with my writing lately and that reviews would really be nice to have, so after giving you two chapters I thought that at least one person would review, but no one did so it made me sad.

And I realise there are probably people who just forget to review and others who just don't altogether. For the people who just forget I can forgive, because I'd be lying if I said I don't forget every now and then (I've actually gone for nearly a hundred chapters once and forgot to review, don't quite know how that happened.) But the for the people who don't review I find it rather irritating, I know it should be all ok as long as I get alright hits on a chapter, as my friend has told me a million times but it isn't for me. Because I have this really paranoid thought that tells me if no one's reviewing no one likes the story and where it's going. Which is really stupid considering I've had a lot of reviews of people telling me how much they love the story but I can't do anything about it unfortunately, not that I haven't tried.

So please can more people start reviewing, it'd help my sanity greatly.


	10. A girl named Fate

_Hello readers._

_I must apologise for so long between updates, though I have many reasons at least for why I haven't updated. At first it was just because my epilepsy started acting up real bad which lasted a while. Then I went on holidays for shy on two weeks. Then I read through the last two books of Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series, which kind of absorbed my life for a good three weeks. My obsession with it got to the point that I quite literally read the last book, an eight hundred and fifty paged book mind you, in five days. I was also delightfully enough, interrupted by my father as the main evil was dying and he wouldn't leave me alone no matter what I told him because he wanted me to hang clothes out. He has a problem with not being very considerate to what people are doing when he asks them to do things. To him if he asks you to do something he expects you to start doing it right away, even if the thing you're doing happens to be getting up off the lounge. No joke, he's done that to me a million times._

_And I just got really sidetracked._

_Anyway, my only other excuse is neglecting to write, for which I'm sorry. Also just another note before I go, I must warn that I wrote this while reading the second Tarzan book so there may be some old language in it, though I think I got most of it out in editing. The weird way I'm talking in this authors note is to be put down to that just before writing this I read I book based in medieval England and Ireland, and the old language in it has taken over my mind. So I'm not talking strangely on purpose I quite literally can do nothing to stop myself speaking like this no matter what I try._

_With nothing else to say now, I guess on with the chapter and I hope you enjoy it._

_**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.**_

* * *

><p><em><strong>A girl named Fate<strong>_

Serah crawled up in a fetal ball as the car drove along, the bumps along the road acting as a bizarre rocking lullaby.

She didn't know what to think anymore. Too much had happened for her to hope to even put this day into words.

'_This couldn't be real.' _She tried to assure herself only to fail. Because it was real. As real as the leather seat that she felt beneath her and the presence of the three only people in the car.

There were two things she'd been told since leaving the school. Her true name, the one that she'd always guessed at because it no longer existed in her memories. It was Serah, they told her. Lebreau had chatted on about how a pretty name it was in an effort to cheer her up. It was nice of her to do so, but It didn't work.

The second was a confirmation on what she had already figured out. That Atla was not Atla, that in fact her name was Fang. Throw away all that had happened to the wind, it was that that made her see that the woman was an entirely different person from what she had been led to believe.

There were tears forming at the edge of her eyes, but she blinked so not to let them fall. They made her feel weak, and she didn't want to feel like that right now. It was hard to explain why, even to herself. Perhaps it was because she felt like if she gave into her incredible want to cry, she'd be unable to still the fall of tears for an unendingly long time.

Looking up, Serah let her gaze scan the interior of the car. It was all black, and created a very dark aura that scared in a weird sort of way. There was a man she had never seen before up front driving. She paid him little mind for he was not important to her at the moment.

Beside her on the far left side of the car sat Lebreau. She could feel the black haired girl casting her worried and sympathetic looks every now and then. She felt somewhat better to know that at least someone was caring enough to worry about her right now.

Because, though she wasn't sure if it was the case, from her point of view, Fang wasn't.

The elder woman sat up front by the driver's left side, stoic and seemingly ignorant of Serah's mental panic. What's more was that somehow, the dark aura she possessed, the one that Serah had been exposed to that day she had visited her at her apartment, had become impossibly darker. How that was even possible, was beyond comprehension.

With that thought Serah ended her look about the car and returned to looking down at her feet.

She felt Lebreau's eyes on her once again, but made no move to respond in any way or even show that she knew she was being looked at.

With nothing else to do, Serah let her body fall to the side slightly so that she was lying against the door. Holding back a sob, she closed her eyes and tried to block out the memories of the day gone past.

How horrible it had been.

'_What a way to turn someone's life around.' _She thought with a derisive mental laugh. It was like something out of a movie. Which of course, was a circumstance only ever fun to watch, not experience.

No. To experience it was hell and the fires that threatened to engulf her if she stepped tooclose to them scared the life out of her. More sobs tried to come to life in her throat but she denied them that right by biting down on her lip. The pain kept her focusedon the present for but a few more seconds, as in no time at all, remembrance of what had happened to her resurfaced in her mind to become dominant once more. And this time she couldn't stop the frightened tears from trailing down her face.

In the morning all had been normal, and the start of school no different. The only mars in her life were the non-existent memories of her life before a couple of months ago, which could easily be put down to amnesia. And the knowledge of Fang's problem, and while she didn't know their cause, she could think up many provocations that could have created them.

But then it all changed in the timespan of one bloody hour!

Rosch, who she had thought of as harmless, albeit annoying, not so long before turned into a dangerous enemy. In a flurry of guns and confusion her simple life had been shattered.

And she was whisked away from the danger zone and forced to sit by obediently as they drove away, onwards to Pulse's HQ. The only comfort offered to her was the promise of a full explanation when they got to their destination. What awaited her scared her, because if the past half hour was anything to go by, it wasn't good.

Closing her eyes tight, she wished herself away. If only for a little while, she wanted to fly away from here to somewhere safe and known. It didn't matter if it was imaginary.

Opening her eyes as the car came to a stop; Serah looked up and uncurled out of a ball, relaxing her limbs. Through the windows she could see the shape of the great looming structure that was Pulse's headquarters. Gulping, she made no attempt to fight against Lebreau when she opened the door for her and helped her outside. There was no fighting now, only acceptance of what was to come.

The grand metallic building that stood before them climbed many stories into the sky, more than she had ever bothered to count. Casting one last fearful glance along its colossal length, Serah followed along as the others began to walk forward to the doors.

The twin glass doors loomed closer with each step, each one filling Serah with more and more dread. What was going to happen to her once she walked through them? Part of her wished she knew, the other just wanted to run far away, curl up in little ball and never come out.

Shaking now, she let Lebreau's hand that laygently about her shoulders guide her on her way towards the doors.

And before she knew it she stood before them. And all too quickly, they were pushed open. It wasn't like she thought that the others would have afforded her the comfort of readying herself, it was just a selfish desire to prolong whatever it was that fate had in store for her as long as she could.

Inwards the doors went and they along with them. The inside, much to Serah's surprise, hadn't been what she had anticipated. Though it wasn't like many people would have anticipated the gigantic metal doors that were but a few metres from the doorway.

Blinking in surprise at the two metal monsters, Serah's startled observation was cut short by a curt pull on her arm on Fang's part. The woman let go quickly and walked past the group to a small section of the wall to what Serah noticed to be a camera. Fang held up what Serah thought must have been an ID of sorts, an action that was soon copied by Lebreau.

A couple of seconds later and the two huge doors began to creak inwards. They were slow going but eventually opened, exposing beyond them a short hallway that led into a large metallic chamber.

Though to the chamber they went, and there they stopped. In the corner of her eye, Serah saw Lebreau stiffen, but for what reason she did not know. So too, did she see that upon entering the chamber, that no small number of people left it once they had sighted them. Both actions made her curious.

Their reason for stopping soon became apparent as a man stepped forward from the swiftly dispersing crowd. He greeted them curtly and made no attempt at introductions, instead he got right on to why he was here.

Directing his attention to Serah alone he said "The higher ups have ordered to speak with you; I am to take you to them. The two behind you may go now."

He faced no argument from Lebreau at the request, if anything she backed off like a cowered dog. But Fang was a different story.

Directing her stone cold glare at the man she told him flatly "No, I'm going with her."

Much to Serah surprise he made no move to sway her decision. In fact he looked to be scared of the women beside her, like she was something dangerous that would tear him apart at a moment's notice.

"As you wish." He replied, cowering back from her, failing in his attempt to hide his fear from them.

From there he led them to one of three elevators that stood side by side up against the far wall of the chamber. Pressing the button for up, they waited for a time till the elevator opened its doors.

Serah gulped again as they walked inside, for whatever awaited her in her talk with the higher ups was beyond her grasp of knowledge. The only thing she knew for trueright now, was that it felt like she was walking into hell.

"It's good to see you again Serah, though I would have preferred it if it had been under different circumstances." A man with a stubble beard and dark hair greeted her as she was led into a large rectangular room somewhere on the higher levels of the building. He kept his voice jovial, but there was a note in it that even she could recognise, that said he was speaking lies.

Fang stood against the wall behind her in silence. Serah noticed that at least once, all of the men in the room threw her a distasteful look, except for one with longish black hair who sat in the far corner. Obviously, they did not want her to be here, which Serah had an inkling that she would have known beforehand, but decided to come despite it.

The man continued on, in his light but lying voice. "We have much to tell you. But I assure you we will tell you as much as possible."

Behind her Fang snorted. The sound invoked a look of anger on the man's face, but he quickly smoothed it over and chose to ignore her. Serah wondered what part of the man's words exactly had provoked her.

"As I said, there is much to tell you, but if you merely take a seat we shall begin."

Nodding, she did as he asked, and took a seat down at one of the tables in the room. The man sat on the side opposite her. She knew she should have been giving him her full attention but as she sat down she felt herself fall into a daze. His words drifted over her ears. They were heard, just not processed by her mind.

"Now, for starters**" **he said "you must know our 'secrets' so to speak." Casting a furtive glance at Fang, wishing for her not to interrupt, he turned his attention back to Serah.

"Pulse and Cocoon, as I'm sure you've had a taste of already, are not what we pretend to be to the public. We are two super powers as you know, but our fight for power over the other isn't quite so, usual. To be true it's quite a tale of sabotage and espionage. We use agents against each other to fight. They are our swords in this battle and we are the arms and body that guide them. They do missions for us; take out any of Cocoon's cronies that need taking care of. Gather information for us that will help us to better grasp worldly control off Cocoon. Anything that they are told to do."

"You are one such agent. You were undoubtedly the best spy in our number in the short time you were with us. But unfortunately, for both the both of us, you were discovered after infiltrating Cocoon's inner sanctum. You would have been killed, had it not been for the woman behind you."

That sentence brought her out of her daze. Snapping her head up, she twisted it backwards so that she could see Fang. Suddenly, her view of the woman utterly changed for what had to be the third time in the last few weeks. It was a peculiar thought to know that she owed the woman her life. And it made her entirely rethink what her connection to her was. Perhaps it was more than she had originally thought.

Her stare was not returned by Fang as the woman kept her head down, but it was obvious that she could feel all the eyes looking her way.

Turning back around, she directed her attention wholly at the conversation. Out of her daze, the man's past words began to sink and she began to finally realise the true gravity of her situation. Now she wanted to know all that had happened to her.

Her voice sounding small, she asked inquisitively "So what happened to me then?"

"After the whole fiasco with Cocoon, we could not direct their attention away from you. Bluntly, they wanted you dead; it was as simple as that. So in an attempt to hide you for as long a time as they gave up searching for you, our scientists inserted a chip into your brain that would release a drug into your system that would suppress your memory, making it seem as if you had amnesia. That way it would seem as if you were just a normal girl, even to yourself. Unfortunately, Cocoon did not stop searching. It got to the point that we had to place shadow agents on you to keep you monitored day and night. Which as you should know, were the two agents who brought you here. There was as well of course, the woman who looked after you. She was also an agent, but alas she was never a very loyal woman by nature, and turned tail last night and came back here saying that she no longer cared what happened to you.."

"Anna?" Serah murmured shocked. The man confirmed her with a nod . The knowledge was like an arrow through the heart. She thought so highly of Anna, and had truly cared for her. Knowing that her feelings weren't returned in the least was very harsh.

Feeling truly sad, Serah asked the man "What else?"

His reply was curt.

"There is nothing else I have to tell you. You are to go now to the 42nd floor to the room marked 48. It is a vacant room that shall now be yours to use. The chip in your brain will be removed at a date we decide, we will inform you when. Whatever more you wish to know, you can find out for yourself. We have no obligation to tell you."

For a moment Serah did nothing more than stare at the man. Then finally she exclaimed "What!"

Her expression turned sour as she continued to stare at the man. Now she understood why Fang had snorted at his words. It was so rude. To put her through so much and give her no more than basic fact.

"Are you serious!? I go through all this and that's all you're going to tell me. For the love of god! I don't even know who I am other than that I was an agent working for Pulse! Can't you give me anything else?"

For the first time since stepping into this place she was feeling an emotion other than overwhelming fear and sadness. And it was anger.

"I have no reason to give you any more than I have; there are plenty of people who will be willing to tell you more, but we do not have to tell you more that isn't of utmost importance."

Glaring at the man, she stood up angrily ready to argue further, but was stopped when a hand touched her shoulder. Looking up she saw the black haired man she had observed earlier sitting in the corner standing above her. He didn't seem mad at her outburst, instead he was calm.

Looking back, he grabbed her shoulder and pushed her in Fang's direction.

"Get her out of here." He told her, sounding as calm as his visage made him appear to be. So Serah couldn't figure out whathis reasons were for what he was doing.

Fang nodded at him and took Serah's arm and left through the door with her without argument.

Once outside, the two walked in silence for a time. Serah keeping pace behind Fang with crossed arms, upset over the rudeness of the higher ups. Once they reached the elevator, she made a note on it.

"They're certainly rude aren't they.

Fang let out a unfriendly laugh "You haven't even scratched the surface." Was her dark reply.

After that they fell silent again. The elevator took them down to the floor the executives had directed her to go to and Fang stepped out with her. By an unspoken agreement to lead her to her room.

The silence continued as they weaved their way through the agents that were scattered here and there along the winding hallways till Serah spoke up again.

"Who was that black haired man?"

"Cid. He's technically not one of the top dogs but they tend to keep him up there with them."

Her tone made it clear she didn't want to talk any more than that but Serah didn't want to elapse into silence again. So she continued to talk. Or rather tried to, but she couldn't think of a subject. So no one made a noise up until her thoughts began to stray to wonderings of the woman in front of her. There were many things she wanted to know about her after all that had happened. Though she was pretty sure given the woman's personality that any questions wouldn't be well received. Still, that didn't stop the question slipping unbidden from her lips.

"Fang why do you hate people so much?" Serah herself blinked in half surprise when she'd realised she'd actually voiced the question. She had thought Fang would ignore it,since she thought it wasn't a big deal, but instead the woman stopped dead in her tracks.

Fang held her silence for a moment, then said while pointing ahead of them "Follow the numbers, you'll find 48." Then she turned back around and walked past Serah.

Confused by the woman's response to what she had thought was a harmless question, Serah twirled around and called back to her retreating figure.

"Fang?!"

Her yell made Fang stop, but only long enough for her to say "Serah, do well to listen to people when they tell you to stay away from the black cat." Then she was lost down the long hallway filled with loitering Agents.

Serah kept staring down the hallway for a few moments more, then, knowing nothing would come of it, turned back around and walked on to the room marked with the number 48.

After finding the room in question, Serah walked inside. It was sparsely furnished, with no more than a bed, a wardrobe and a bedside table. As well as a wooden desk and chair on the far side of the room. Clutching her hands together at her sides in a nervous action, Serah closed the door behind her.

With nothing else to do she lay on the bed and thought. Thought about today, the past week, the past few months, everything. Anything in fact that came to her mind. She contemplated what her future would be from now on and what her past may have contained. She thought for so long, that she fell into a dream like trance looking at the room's right wall. She was about to fall victim to sleep's waiting embrace when a knock on the door awoke her.

Snapping up, she lifted herself into a sitting position and asked anxiously "W-who's there?"

There was no answer. Instead whoever was outside opened the door and let themselves in without permission. Serah made a metal note to lock the door next time.

From the door, a little girl walked into the room. Her hair was a strange array of shades of purple and she wore a sleeveless black dress that fell about her ankles. She couldn't have been more than five or six. She looked up at Serah and smiled.

"It's good to see you again." She said and Serah was struck by how eloquently she spoke for her age, so much so that it was even a little creepy.

"You know me?"

The girl nodded "Before you left, yes."

Taking in that knowledge Serah did a little nod of her head "Well?" she inquired.

"I'd like to think so." The girl replied.

Staring at the girl as she walked over andpulled the wooden chair away from the table and sat on it, Serah asked her "Why are you here?**"**

"To tell you things I guess. I'd be an idiot to think that the higher ups would tell you everything you need to know and you certainly won't be getting an explanation from Fang if I think I know her half as well as I do."

Gnawing on her lip curiously as she stared at her, Serah posed her one last question "Who are you?"

The girl gave her a soft smile and held out her hand in greeting.

"I am Fate."

* * *

><p><em>It only strikes me lately just how strange a girl Fate is. Though it's to be expected of her, considering that the way she has grown up has denied her a proper childhood. Also, like how Serah says in the chapter, the way she speaks is actually legitimately creepy. It's like hearing an adult's voice from a child, and yet it still being a child's voice. It you get what that means. And love her name, I can't remember exactly what made me come up with that name anymore but I love it, and it fits her, as you'll see in later chapters.<em>

_And completely irrelevant, but I came up with a line while making a cup of tea but neglected to write it down right away so I've forgotten some of it, so I want your opinion on which of these sounds better._

_It started with "He's a good man" and the rest was either of these three lines._

_"your story paints him foul." "your story fouls him." or "your story does him foul."_

_I want to have the best one before I decide to write in it down. I have a book of quotes you see, some I've stolen (My language for took) and others I created myself, like the line above. I put them in my stories where I see fit and I hate when forget a really awesome quote because I forgot to write it down. And I really don't want to lose the quote above because I really like it and I came so close to doing so._

_This was rather irrelevant to the story I know but I have really bad habit of getting off track._

_So I'd love it if someone could give a review telling me which line they prefer and a word or two of the chapter I hope._

_~Sayonara (Note of uselessness: I've learnt how to write in Japanese.)_


	11. Family

_Hello readers and welcome to what is official the shortest chapter I have ever posted on here (It's still like 2,300 words.)_

_Sorry that I haven't updated in a while but I've been organising all my other stuff on here and it took a while. But now I'm bck on track, and this is the first full loop of my stories that I've done on time in about a year, no kidding. This chapters actually been done for a week so I have another one written for one of my others stories that I'm probably going to be posting tomorrow._

_Oh and if there are parts in this chapter that seem like they could have been written better that's because I made the mistake of starting to play Kingdom Heart 3D before I was done it, so the only thing going through my head at the end of this chapter was-_

_Kingdom hearts 3D Kingdom heart 3D, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku,Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama,Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama, Riku-sama._

_So yeah, I might have been just a little distracted. _

_Anyway on with the chapter, hope you like it._

_Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does._

* * *

><p><em><strong>Family<strong>_

Serah stared at the girl in front of her. Fate she'd called herself. Such a peculiar name that she'd never heard elsewhere. There was a hand outstretched to her in greeting but she was unsure if she should take it. Scared of in fact, but she couldn't think of why. Just that something here scared her; it seeped through the walls, pervaded the air around them and dyed the world black. The girl in front of her was drowned in its suffocating presence.

So she didn't shake Fate's hand, but instead held hers to her chest so hard it hurt until the girl withdrew her hand. She thought Fate would be upset by her reluctance but she was wrong, because she had forgotten where she was. This was not the normal world anymore; it hadn't been since she'd stepped through the twin glass doors that signified the end of everything sane and right, and the beginning of hell.

Fate's only response to her denying her hand was to place it back on her lap with the other one and reply, "That was the right choice; it's good to see you know fear. The paranoia it induces will be a great help when the need arises, but it is also good to keep in mind that too much is crippling and will do nothing but bad things to you."

Serah blinked her eyes in surprise generally not having thought that the little girl would answer that way, and again struck by how out of place her way of speaking was which was far too advanced for the five year old she was. It sent shivers down her spine. Because the voice was almost as if hearing an adult speak from a child's body. It was terribly unnerving. Serah tried to speak, but her words caught in her throat and were ripped and torn as she tried to get them past. Fate caught on to her obvious trouble, and spoke the question she wished to speak.

"You want to know what I have to tell you?"

Serah nodded. This day had been a whirlpool of questions with no answers. The minimal explanation on the part of the Higher ups hadn't done much to ease the flow of confusion going through her mind. Because there was still one question bigger than all the others that had been left unanswered.

Leaning forward, she looked Fate in the eyes, those bizarre pools of dark blue that looked so much like the night sky, and asked "Who am I?"

Fate smiled; a warm smile that seemed so sadly out of place on her face, and reached her hand out to grasp Serah's. This time Serah made no move to fight her and let her small hand take hold of her's, "You're you," she answered "Serah Farron."

"But who is Serah Farron? Until today I had no idea that that person existed."

Fate smiled at her again, recognising her every problem, "Serah Farron was a girl who was raised in an orphanage because her Mother and Sister faked her death at birth so that they could get her away from here so she'd never have to live this life. It may sound strange to you but it was an act of love, because they had seen what becomes of the kids who are raised here, as I am an example myself, and as was your Sister. You were a girl who was brought to Pulse after they tracked her down as punishment to her Sister for something she'd done that was more their fault then it ever was hers. But don't be scared, because you are that girl no longer because you were uncovered on a mission and your memory was erased, and you became someone else. Don't be afraid for your past, because who you were then no longer exists, you are yourself and no one else."

Calm. That was the emotion Fate's words promoted. It flowed freely through them and seeped into Serah. There was hell somewhere in her mind, fear that sparked into flame at the mention of a girl from the past who was no more, but it was far off. Serah drew her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them protectively and let herself exhale. The slow process of calming was at its beginning but it'd be a long time til it was over. So until it was Serah reached out to Fate to hold onto.

What was there that she wanted to ask her? She thought, but as quickly as the question came so did an answer. There was something she wanted to ask her.

"You mentioned a Mother and Sister, who were they?"

A strange look passed over Fate's face, and she looked away from her when she answered her, the room holding her gaze rather than her, "Rosalie and Claire. Rosalie was a woman who was caught in Pulse's net by accident, an error in their plans. But nevertheless eternally trapped in the twisted world of this war that's lasted generations."

No longer looking up at Fate, Serah asked her, "And Claire? What about her?"

Somehow even though she was looking down and not at the girl in front of her, Serah knew that when she asked this question Fate's eyes returned to her, "She was someone vastly different."

The girl didn't seem like she was going to say any more on the subject after that, so Serah looked up to see if she could get her to go on, "How" she asked, "How was she different?"

There was a most curious look in Fate's eyes, but she didn't fight the continuation of the topic, "By a whole world of difference. Like she was something beyond what Rosalie could ever be. This world twisted her, and as the years passed Rosalie became horrified to see her transformation as it progressed. It was why they were so adamant of you never being a part of this, because even at six this place had damaged her so. When Rosalie died of an illness when Claire was ten it was like whatever walls that kept out the remaining demons that had yet to possess her for their own fell away and she changed more than anyone ever thought she could."

Watching Fate as she told this tale of her Sister, Serah felt the words fall pass her lips before she had a chance to stop them, "Why?"

Locking her eyes on Serah, the girl answered "Because when Rosalie died it destroyed her. She had never been truly alone here like so many others here were, and it protected her from truly being lost to the humane world. So when she lost her Mother she lost that protection. And you must know, the fact that you had died at birth was never fully believed by Pulse, so there was always a threat upon Claire and Rosalie that if they ever did anything against them that they would search for you. And Pulse being Pulse, there was no question if they would have found you or not. Try and imagine that being constantly at your back, with no shield to protect you from the horrors that might befall you. Your only choice to do exactly as you're told without question. To do Pulse's mission, be their weapon, to be the bleeding thorn at Cocoons side. You would change to, would you not?"

Serah felt a pool of sadness forming in her chest. That was horrible. To think that there had been people out there who had done so much to protect her. Hearing of her Sister's troubles made hers seem so small in comparison. She didn't care much if the conversation ended here, but there were still things that needed to be told, so it had to go on.

"You speak of Claire in past tense, what happened to her?"

Fate did a quick intake of breath when Serah voiced this question and looked away. Her next words seemed so awfully painful for her to say that it made Serah question greatly just how the little girl was connected to her Sister.

"When I was three months old she was set on a mission with a team of others, and labelled Killed in action."

Serah's eyes widened, she should have expected such of course, but it still sounded so…so "Awful." She whispered.

"Hm" Fate looked up ever so slightly from her lap, her eyes sad.

"That's so awful." Serah repeated for her.

Fate hummed in agreement and looked back down.

A couple more minutes passed in this fashion, with neither of them talking, instead letting time quietly go by before it struck Serah to ask, "What of my father?" She hadn't said of word of him.

"He was never a part of this." Fate replied, and Serah decided not to question what those words meant, and the many different ways that meaning could take shape.

Silence took over the room after that, and it lasted many minutes, though Serah couldn't have said if it was ten or thirty, for the minutes seemed to merge as time went past. She let it stay that way, for Fate seemed to have dropped out of reality at the second last question and Serah doubted her ability to bring her back. But she didn't mind it, because it gave her time to process all she had been told.

She was Serah Farron. The name felt a little odd on her tongue, but not wrong. She had had a Mother and a Sister who had made great sacrifices just to keep her safe, even if the end result had been a failure, she felt comforted to know that there had been people here who had loved enough to do that for her. And most of all, she was no longer who she once was. Because that person had disappeared with her memory, and even if she recovered that, that person would never come back. She was sure that when she started remembering things they might change her a little, but not completely. Nothing would stop her from being her.

It would be a long time until she was well again, but this conversation with Fate had been a comfort, and she felt better. It wasn't 'alright', but for now better would do.

The next she spoke up she was sure that it must have been at least forty minutes since the silence had started. Sheer curiosity powered her words, "Fate, what happened to my Sister seems to upset you so, how where you connected to her?"

For a moment she thought the girl was still gone, but after a while she lifted her head and Serah saw her eyes were clear and focused, "I was someone special to her."

Serah raised her eyebrows curiously. "But I thought you said she died when you were three months old, how could you be someone special to her when she hardly ever knew you?"

"She knew you even less and she still loved you, isn't that answer enough? One doesn't have to know someone very long to hold them dear."

Serah nodded in agreement a little absently, "I guess you're right."

There was a lapse in talking for a couple of seconds or so, before after some obvious inner fighting, Fate said, "And you're wrong by the way."

Confused, Serah leaned forward, "About what?"

"Claire didn't die when I was three months old; she was taking prisoner by Cocoon, and killed in their torture chambers after months of torture. So did the others who were sent on that mission with her that weren't killed when it all went to hell. All except Fang."

'All except Fang?' Serah thought surprised by it, but wouldn't that mean- "You mean she escaped capture then?"

"No." Fate said, shooting down whatever optimistic thoughts she could have on the matter. "I mean she escaped from the torture chambers, it's why she's so messed up."

That's what she'd been afraid of. Serah's hand went to cover her mouth, oh god how horrible that would have been. She'd thought it awful what had happened to her Sister, and awful it was, but at least she had been put out of her misery, Fang had to live with it. She finally got it, why her eyes always looked so dead.

After a while more, Fate said, "You were a comfort to her when you were here you know. She had been close to your Sister, so she became protective of you in her place without really noticing. And she liked you, you and your Sister weren't anything alike, but she liked you. After your memory was erased she got a lot worse, I guess because she had lost what had been a protection of truly losing it for so long."

Looking back up to Fate, Serah asked "Why are you telling me this?" She was interested in the girl's reasoning's.

Fate looked her straight in the eyes when she answered her, "Because I'd like you to help her, it's as simple as that. It's painful for me to watch her deteriorate more and more as time goes by." Finishing her sentence Fate slipped off the chair she was sitting on and pushed it back into the desk and began heading for the door.

Before she had a chance to open it Serah shot out, "Wait, what I can even do?"

Fate turned back to her with her hand on the doorknob, "Everything." She answered. Twisting the doorknob she said before leaving, "Fang's room is on the floor above us, room 68. A warning but she'll kill you for entering, so be careful." And with that she was gone.

Serah sat back on the bed, her new feeling of calm now tainted by strong feelings of confusion. But there was something else as well, a feeling of intrigue. For she noticed at the last couple of sentences Fate had started talking of Fang so personally. It made her wonder-

_What was their connection?_

* * *

><p><em>And done, hoped it was alright, I think I could of written this a lot better but I'm not sure how. I had the same problem with the chapter I just wrote for my Kingdom Hearts story. You know what but it's very irritting trying to update this chapter while your mind keeps telling you that it's SSI it's your KH story, very irritating indded.<em>

_Please review, I'd love you for it._


	12. What you meant to me

_Hello everyone and welcome to the twelve chapter of SSI._

_This chapter is another flash back chapter. It's was annoying because it has some important things in it but it wouldn't let itself be written the way I wanted it to. Though my sister reassures me that it's alright, so I'll just have to go with her judgement on that. The next chapter is going to be a flash back chapter too, but it'll be the last one I get on with the main storyline. It funny because that's just taken me about sixty thousand words. I cannot write short stories._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.**

* * *

><p><em><strong>What you meant to me<strong>_

Fang lay awake on her bed; she felt the craving for seohilin creeping in from the depths of her mind, but it was weak enough to ignore for now. Through she knew that wouldn't last long. Her stash of it was running low and it would only be a week or two at best until she'd have to go back to Maxine to get more, and she'd be lying if she said she was looking forward to going back to that hag. So she was trying to make it last as long as she could, she didn't want worry about that chick going through her head anyway, it left a sour taste in her mouth. Besides, her mind was preoccupied with other things.

Serah for one. Fang frowned; now of all subjects that was one that happened to leave a pretty bad taste in her mouth. Thinking about it, she really didn't have many good memories to attach to that girl. Sure her time at Pulse hadn't been bad until she'd been sent on that spying mission, but she represented some pretty bad things to Fang. She knew that Serah had never meant to leave such a bad mark on her, and it wasn't her fault or anything that she had, but no matter how hard she tried to think otherwise Fang couldn't seem to steer her sense of Serah the right way. To her she was a symbol of failure, and the loss of Light. One of the most painful things she had ever had to go through.

Because Light had meant so much to her regardless of the small time she had known her. Those few months were some of the best she'd had in a long time. In fang, Lightning found a kindred spirit, she found someone who had been put through hell by the corporations and yet survived mostly whole. She saw strength in that and despite the jealousy she held for it, clung to that strength instead of pushing it away. And it let her survive, and in time the two of them became very close. Many, many times was Fang told by the agents around her to avoid blackcats, but she never listened once even though there were many arguments for why she should have.

Fang turned on her side and gave a bitter smile. Ah yes were there ever reasons why she should have taken that advice. Light meant a lot to her yes, but she was one twisted son of a bitch. The world of Cocoon and Pulse had left Fang battered and bruised and gave her a fuming hatred that could engulf the world, but it had destroyed Light from within. Both mentally and physically. If you didn't know her well you might have never guessed but Light's body was a wreck, it was a wonder how she could stand most days. But that was just the ways things were for her, being Pulse's top agent at her best, when they wanted her to do something for them there were no complaints to be raised no matter what condition she was in. To them if any hurt you had could be masked by drugs you were fine to send out. They knew of course that such treatment would kill her in time, but that was for them to care about later.

What's more, the bloody girl did every drug under the sun, if it meant she could escape reality for an hour or so she'd do it. It was little wonder that people alienated her how crazed she could become sometimes, no one understood her. Apart from herself, Fang could name only one more who got her. Fang smiled more than a little madly when the man's name echoed through her head.

_Caius._

Now there was a name that set her blood on fire.

**…:…**

The memories flitted in and out of focus, fleeting yet ever so haunting.

The image of her sitting down in a hallway full of agents talking to others around her as the familiar figure of a pink haired girl walks through them momentarily interrupting their conversation. A little while ahead a man with dark purple hair looks up at her and flashes her a quick smile. She looks at him, not happy but not sad either and keeps walking. Someone besides Fang whispers in her ear "Avoid black cats." But the damage is done, and her curiosity sparked.

She doesn't listen to them

In another memory now, Fang sees herself talking to the pink haired girl, Lightning as she now knows her to be, not any of those stupid names Cid was calling her because of this weird inside joke they have about him never calling her by her real name. The girl seems wary of her, but Fang doesn't let it bother her because she wants to know her no matter what it takes. She just has to.

More scenes flow by her in a flash, some good, some bad. Her getting to know Light better, her starting to get on her good side. Light even beginning to like her. But then there are the bad ones, like her finding out of all Lightning's addictions, her failing health and her twisted mind.

One of these memories sticks out more than others. Cold light streams in from a window late at night and the talk between Fang and Light turns to that of death. Lightning brings the fate of her mother into the equation and that of Fang's village which is now known to her. Madness seeps out from all corners of her being and the word suicide taints the air. There is much talk from then on, worried frantic talk spoken from Fang alone until in a wave of swift insanity a knife is pointed to her throat. The memory than fades, its ending left unknown.

More visions come and go and weeks are crossed in a matter of seconds. And always that man is there, that purpled haired man whose name turns to sand on her tongue. Fang keeps seeing them together, and sees the looks that pass between. Oh how those looks infuriate her, but she keeps silent and holds the feelings she feels for Light to her chest. _'You must not tell her'_ Fang tells yourself. They could ruin everything.

And then lastly she is thrown into a last memory that pains her to this day.

Fang finds herself standing in a dark hallway populated by no one else other than herself and Light.

"What is it?" she asks her.

News had reached them both that Caius had been pronounced Killed in action and Light was in hysterics. Her mood seemed weird to Fang, she knew that there had been love between the two but her friend's reaction is overkill even for that.

Turning to her, with her face tearstained in response Light utters two words that shatter Fang's world.

"I'm pregnant."

**…:…**

Fang snapped back into focus and squeezed her hand into fist so hard she feared she might break it. Her eyes wandered to the blank ceiling. That last memory was one she'd of preferred to leave where it belonged. In the past.

The memory of when she'd learned of Light's pregnancy was a horrible one for her. To learn that Caius, a man she hated with all her heart for no matter how petty a reason, had done that to her turned her blood to ice in her veins. Someone else who may have seen things clearer at the time would have said it takes two to tango, but she didn't need reminding. She knew that well, it was just that she needed somewhere to direct her anger. And Caius was the most likely option.

She hated to think that it had been him who had Light when she wanted her so. And Lightning being pregnant with his child only served as a reminder to her that that was how things had been, not the other way around. For she loved Light so, and she'd wished so much that it had been her in Caius's position instead of him every time she saw those two together.

But she didn't have the luxury to tell Light any of this, she couldn't in fact. For her pregnancy ate away at her last remaining sanity. Fang didn't want to imagine how it had been for her to be pregnant with a child whose father she knew had died without the knowledge that the child within her even existed.

Not to mention that for the child to survive it had meant giving up all her vices. From alcohol to drugs and dreaded seohilin, words cannot describe how sick she became. The pain it brought Fang to remember how she had watched Light slowly fade away, growing sicker and sicker as the days went by was horrible. How she ever survived it all eludes her to this day.

Sucking in a painful breath, the memory came alive in her mind and flickered in front of her eyes.

**…:…**

Fang sat in a chair besides a bed on which Lightning slept restlessly. Rising a hand to her face she rubbed sleep out of her eyes for what had to be the millionth time that night. She didn't want to go to sleep, not tonight when Light was so sick. The poor girl had been slipping in and out of consciousness all day and she was worried. She had been getting steadily worst over the past three weeks. It was horrendous to watch yet she couldn't take her eyes away. She was afraid, so afraid, that if she did she wouldn't be there if she died. She didn't want to leave her alone for that. Death is scary, no matter how much the person in question might wish for it, and Fang wanted to be there for Light if it did decide to take her away to sweet oblivion.

Tears prickled at the edge of her eyes but Fang blinked them away. She didn't want to cry, it wouldn't help anything so what was the point? It was Lightning's own fault she was this sick in the first place. She knew the risks of going on those drugs. Even if you threw the rest of them to the wind, there were still the vastly deadly withdrawal symptoms of seohilin to contend with. First there were the cold chills, the warning signs that alone could kill you of hyperthermia at their worst. As luck would have death in that way was very rare, but then you had the severe lethargy that practically paralysed you the worst it got. Then the nausea kicks in, and sickness begins. And that's not all, there are so many more, and next to all end in some sort of painful death. It amazed her that Light had survived for this long. Because bringing in the rest of her many different choices of drugs to abuse together with seohilin and her pregnancy made for one terrifying cocktail of hell. It's little wonder why she held so little hope for her and the child's survival. For what hope could be had when it looked as if all possible paths led to death.

Breathing out a sigh Fang leaned back in her chair. Her eyelids began to droop without her noticing but she snapped them back open before they could close on her. Looking back to the sad figure of Lightning asleep on the bed she settled into a more comfortable position in her chair and conceded that this was going to be a long night.

More images flashed by Fang, of her sitting by Light's bedside alone as the girl slept on fitfully in solitary silence. Of the times when Cid came to talk to her to try and ease the quietness that was beginning to drive Fang up the wall for Lightning was rarely ever much use for conversation. And how she loved those visits even though she never told Cid that. There was more, much more, the memories swarmed in front of eyes, swerving and ducking and hardly ever making themselves legible, but there was one to did come to Fang understandable. One that was only one of two memories she had of that time that could be called good.

She was lying beside Lightning on her bed and the girl was awake. She had been doing better lately; she was far from well, but better was better than nothing. She was still very tired and lethargic but at least she could form comprehendible sentences now as opposed to when she was so sick she was delusional. Their conversation had swerved off from its original so immensely that they weren't really sure any more what it had been. So far, it seemed to have reached the topic of names.

Lifting her mouth to Light's ear Fang whispered, "You have a weird name you know."

Light hummed a little, and answered slowly, "You're…one to talk…and it isn't…my real name anyway."

"I know." Fang responded, laying her head on the crook of Lightning's neck, "Doesn't stop it being weird."

Fighting off the sleep she felt coming, Lightning tried her hardest to keep the conversation going on her part, "What about…yours…then…it's strange too."

"I can see that, but it's not that it's my real name either, it's just the English equivalent." Fang answered readjusting her position to make it more comfortable.

"What is…your real one…then?" Lightning asked her, fighting off her gathering lethargy.

Rising her mouth to her ear again, Fang whispered "Klyka. Fang was actually just a nickname that Jihl gave me, but the rest of those racist pigs over at Cocoon liked it better than my real one because it was English so they all insisted on calling me that. So eventually I just got used to that, I can hardly see Klyka as my name now it's become that foreign to me. Sad really, Vily got to keep her name but I didn't."

Lightning gave a small hum in answer, giving up her fight with her tiredness she closed her eyes, "It's pretty" she whispered as she fell asleep. The girl was out like a light and never got to hear her friend say in reply.

"Thank you."

The visions changed again, and scenes of Lights condition getting worst once more passed by until her mind chose to drop her into another clear memory. The second and final memory of Light's sickness that couldn't have been called bad.

It was very late at night, definitely passed Midnight, and Fang sat where she always sat beside Light on her chair at her bedside. She was exhausted again from lack of sleep and anxiety filled days. Light had taken a turn for the worst the past week or so, and her fears had begun anew. The girl was five months in on her pregnancy, far longer than Fang thought she could make, but that didn't make it in anyway time to get cocky. The baby seemed fine so far miraculously, but its mother was anything but. Right now Lightning was sleeping in fevered dreams, and she tossed and turned frequently but nothing Fang did seemed to calm her down.

Fang herself sat with her head bowed and her hands clasped together in prayer. She'd never really taken to the prayers said by the people from this country; they always seemed to be missing something to her so she didn't bother herself with them. Tonight the words that left her lips were her old traditional prayers of Oerba spoken in her beloved Oerban tongue, the only thing left she had of her old home now that she didn't have Vanille.

Fang guessed that sometime during this Light must have roused, for when she looked up at the end of a prayer the girl was watching her intently. Tired and weak, she asked her, "What language is that?"

Looking away, Fang answered, "Oerban."

Fang saw Lightning smile a little in the corner of her eye, "It's nice." She said before falling back asleep.

Slowly, so slowly, did Fang begin to turn back to Light. Wondering as she did if Lightning would ever realise the significance of what she'd said. That this along with telling her that her real name was pretty meant more to than she could possibly comprehend. For she had grown having her first language condemned for petty reasons, and no one had ever told her that it was pretty or even remotely tolerable.

The feeling it gave her to know that someone actually liked it, was nice.

**…:…**

Fang felt herself slip back into reality. There were tears hanging on to the edges of her eyes, so she brushed them away. She hated to think of the time when Light was sick. It was like a great black spot on her mind that she couldn't scrub off no matter how hard she tried. The bad memories remained, and there they would stay. Though it wasn't like those events had killed Light as she thought they would, they were still some of the most painful she had.

She didn't know how, she didn't know why, but Light did survive and her baby was born. Three months early yes, but alive and that's all that counted. And the little thing was a fighter. It fought all the way from the bad health it suffered from at birth into the good health it attained before Fang and its mother were sent out of that taboo mission where Lightning was lost to them both.

That bought another tear to Fang's eye. The baby had only been three months old, and Lightning wasn't even fully recovered yet from her time of sickness and the baby's birth. But that was just Pulse then wasn't it? If drugs could mask the pain then you were fine. They knew the dangers but they set her out anyway. She was in no condition for that mission and it's now Pulse's fault that a newborn was left motherless. All theirs, no one else's! Sure she could blame Cocoon for killing her, but they wouldn't have even had the chance to if not for Pulse. They might be the kinder of the two but both Corporations have their evil point, and this was Pulse's. And now because of them that baby was raised without its mother and she never got to tell the woman she loved just how much she truly meant to her.

Blowing out a sigh Fang did her best to calm down and ease the tension flowing through her body. Mentally getting angry at Pulse for its shortcomings wasn't going to do anything. As she settled down she lifted her eyes to the ceiling again and a thought hit her.

Thinking of Light's baby, she wondered where Fate was now?

* * *

><p><em>And done, hope you liked the chapter.<em>

_Also I realised as I was writing this but how come no one's has yet to question how Rosch seems to be unkillable. Now that I think about it but that worries me a little, didn't anyone find that wrong enough to comment on it, I don't think even my sister's said anything about it yet._

_And a fun thing about how my sister knows me creepily well in the plot clichés I like. She knew who Fate was the moment she walked into the room last chapter. I had a feeling that some people might catch on to it, but not that fast. She does that to me a lot._

_Please review, I'll love you for it._


	13. This is torture

_**This is torture**_

Serah sat on her bed mulling over all that Fate had told her. For one, how she'd had family here, a mother and a sister who had sadly died. It made her depressed to think how they were both gone; she may not have known them but having the possibility of having living family taken away from her as soon as she learned of their existence wasn't a nice pill to swallow.

Letting her gaze drift other her vacant room, Serah twiddled her fingers, thinking her way through the subject. Some of her first questions were about the exact details of her dead relative's deaths, despite knowing she'd never get them. Another was who her utterly unmentioned father had been. Though given the kind of place she had evaluated Pulse to be, she wasn't sure she wanted the answer.

Stretching her legs out, another line of thought trespassed into her mind. She wanted to know who Fate was. In fact, she wanted to know why the girl talked of Fang in such a personal manner. Going down that lane, each want she thought up became more and more dominant over the other as they accumulated. As it went on frustration began to bloom in her chest. She wanted to know why Fate wanted to help Fang so much. She wanted to know what was wrong with Fang in the first place. She wanted to know what had been done to Fang to make her so twisted! She wanted to know who had done it! What had done it! And most of all she wanted to know what the hell kind of world she was in that could do that to someone in the first place!

Screaming in frustration Serah grabbed her pillow and threw it at the wall. Clutching her hands she fell into a kneeling position, and took in deep breaths to calm herself. She'd made herself angry over the slightest provocation, she knew, but she couldn't give a damn. She'd been angry ever since Pulse's heads had denied her the information she wanted because it was "unneeded". This was her finally snapping. She knew who she was now, somewhat, but now that she did, Serah found that there was so much more information she was after. Much, much more. Knowing who she was wasn't anything to knowing what the hell was going on. And as it turned out, in her mind the mystery that was Fang had taken dominance. Something told her that the woman knew more than she wished to say on the subject of Serah's questions. She was a complete ball of confusion. Serah knew next to nothing about her, truly the foremost of her facts on her was her physical appearance. But that's a pitiful amount considering it quite literally takes a look to memorise.

Gnawing on her lip as she thought, Serah went through all that she knew of Fang in her head. She'd introduced herself as a woman called Atla, wore a disguise so that Serah only truly found out what she looked like when she had gone to her apartment. She had problems, big problems. She had a drug addiction. She was an agent of Pulse, and had some connection to some strange girl called Fate. Closing her eyes Serah truly appreciated just how pathetic her knowledge of the woman called Fang was.

Opening her eyes, the words echoed throughout her mind, _'Truly pathetic.'_

As another thought slowly came to life in her mind, Serah mulled it over, and it wasn't so long after that that she'd slipped off her bed and her feet began moving her to the door. Twisting the knob, Serah let herself outside. The halls were filled with noisy agents, but Serah paid them no mind as she pushed through them. It didn't even hit her that she hadn't thought to lock her door. She reached the elevator and waited for it to open, then stepped inside.

There were questions that she wanted answered.

**…:…**

Lying on her bed, Fang stared up at the ceiling. It hadn't been a good day in her books, though she doubted it would be in anyone else's either. Serah's re-induction into Pulse and the tormenting reverie her mind dreamed up were the biggest of the mars. Another was simply the ever present enemy that was her mind. On days like this, she wished to be lying on grass, it might sound weird, but it reminded her of the fields of Oerba. The fields were lovely patches of green that spread as far as the eye could see. It almost brought a smile to her face to remember all the times the caretakers of the orphanage had found her and Vanille asleep in the soft blades of green, lullabied into dreams by the heat of the sun. This bed wasn't good enough to calm her. Smiling bitterly she thought cynically just how easily she had added another negative to her day. How much she hated this land.

Shifting onto her side she tried like all the other days to stop thinking of all the bad things, try to think of something nice for a change. But like all the other days the result was the same, the more she thought about it the more the bad clung on. It was unbanishable.

Though, as she found out in a few more minutes time, it wasn't her own inner battling that stopped her thinking about the dark side of today, it was the opening on her door. But only to banish to the small troubles of today and throw her into the hell of the past.

Cursing, she sat up, deciding that she really should listen to Fate's reminders to lock her door. As the door opened she was surprised to see it wasn't who she thought it was going to be at all. Not in the slightest.

"Serah." The name left her lips with a touch of hostility, and the girl who now stood before her bed hardened her face to bare it. Seeing the intention written on Serah's face Fang figured that the girl wouldn't be frightened away by simple words, actions either, if she gauged the strength of her opponent right. So she ventured to ask, "What are you doing here?"

Serah swallowed over a lump in her throat and replied unsteadily, "I want to know who you are."

'_I want to know who you are.'_

Like an echo, those words rang though Fang's mind, and she froze like a deer in the headlights. Her mind registered a slight sense of confusion, but another feeling of striking familiarity ruled it out. Staring at Serah, Fang was hit with a sense of deja vu and for an instant she wasn't in her room, but somewhere else, a long time ago.

Too much to bear she turned away, clutching at her chest anxiously in an effort to reclaim her calm. Coming back down from her fright, she flashed a glance at Serah in the corner of her eye. The girl was confused by her sudden reaction, and it wasn't long before she questioned, "What is it?"

"Nothing," Fang lied, "It's just that you're not the first person to ask me that."

Serah remained confused, but chose not to question Fang further. Calm enough now that she could think clearly, Fang turned back to face Serah, "You've met Fate haven't you."

"Huh." Serah blinked, "How'd you figure that?"

"Because you wouldn't have asked me that if you hadn't, you would have asked who you were. And if I'm not mistaken, I never told you which room was mine." Fang replied. Seeing Serah take in that knowledge, she continued, "I also knew that if you were ever to come back here she would seek you out and," Fang paused, even with much trying her next words still came out unsteady, "I knew she would have told you about Light. And Rosalie, and how they died, and finally me. She'd never leave you without telling you something about me."

"She wanted me to help you." Serah mumbled weakly.

Fang looked up at her like she'd guessed as much, "Yeah that'd be it, she's always wanted me to stop being so dark. Not that she's ever managed much."

Staring at her like she'd said something wrong, Serah told her scoldingly, "You shouldn't talk of someone trying to help you like its wrong."

Fang shrugged, "So I've been told, by Fate and others, but if you must know I've long stopped caring for kind words. People can try to help me if they want, but I couldn't even give a crap for the sentiment anymore."

Pulling a face, Serah walked forward and kneeled down by the end of the bed, "Why aren't you the pessimist?" She mumbled indignantly. Ignoring her comment, Fang watched her intently, wondering what her next move was going to be.

Half looking at Fang, half looking at the bed end, Serah questioned her absently, "Fate, she talked of you so personally, who is she to you, a friend?"

"No" Fang answered as soon as Serah had spoken the words, "Not a friend, a docheryami."

"A what?" Serah quickly spurted out.

Giving her a look, Fang denied her a proper answer, "I have no reason to explain that to you, a docheryami is a docheryami, simple as that."

Serah pulled a face, "Well you're a hard one to deal with aren't you?"

"So are you if I've guessed right. Seeing as your still here I'm going to say you've decided that you're not going to be frightened off and are intent on getting what you want out of me." Fang said irritably.

"Of course." Serah replied in turn, "I want to know what made you the way you are now, what happened to you to do this."

Turning hostile at a moment's notice, Fang shot back, "I have no intention of telling you."

"And I have no intention of leaving; tell me what happened to you!" Serah countered ten times stronger.

"In your dreams." Fang spat.

Standing up, Serah cut an ominous figure as she stood over the bed and responded, "You'll have to do better than that if you want to scare me away. Tell me what happened to you!"

Snapping, fury lit up in Fang's eyes and she lurched over the bed to grab the front of Serah shirt and pull her in close, "This has nothing to do with you, you have no right to ask me this, you little hag-"

She was cut short as a powerful slap to her cheek sent to her reeling sideways.

Clutching her cheek Fang got back up to look at her assailant. Serah stood over her now equally, if not more furious, than Fang herself had been a moment ago. Staring up at her wide eyed Fang could do no than cover her ears as Serah exploded in a fit of rage.

"And what right do you have to call me a hag you bloody cry baby! So what if you have problems, so what if you don't want to tell me it? What will locking it all inside ever do but destroy you! I don't care if you don't want to tell me, I'm not giving you a choice!"

Staring back frightened, Fang let out a measly "No."

Calming down, Serah sucked in a breath, "I thought I told you that it wasn't your call to make." Watching on as Fang continued to stare away from her in stubbornness, Serah went on, "For starters, will you tell me what your relationship with my sister was. You stare at me like you're looking at a ghost; I highly doubt there could be anyone you're seeing in me but her."

Sneaking a sidewards glance at Serah, Fang let up on her stubbornness ever so slightly, making a strange arm gesture that waved a hand with clamped fingers up and down in front of her face, she mumbled, "These are not things we say in words."

Nodding, choosing not to be confused by Fang actions, Serah chose to speak another question, "Well how about this? The word docheryami is foreign, where do you come from?"

This caught Fang's attention, and the woman's eyes locked on to Serah the instant the words had left her mouth. They had the strangest look in them, but Serah did her best to brave it out instead of cowering under the overpowering look. Many moments passed by in that fashion until finally Fang's stare loosened up and she answered in a wavering voice, "It's Oerban."

Now it was Serah's turn to be caught off guard. Oerban, she said Oerban. If she had said anything other than that she would have been able to take it easy, but Oerban, that was just too impossible to believe. "You're Oerban!" she yelled in disbelief.

Fang nodded, "Yeah."

Running a hand though her hair, Serah tried to grab hold of her thoughts as they raced through her head. "Oerban ok," she mumbled to herself, "didn't expect that, nope nada, not at all.

Watching Serah freak out, Fang interrupted her weakly, "Is it really that strange? You don't have to react like that you know."

"Yes I do!" Serah shot her down, coming closer and kneeling back by the bed end, "You're Oerban Fang, Oerban. You come from the most isolated continent on the planet!" Letting her sentence hang in the air something important hit her like a tonne of bricks. How. How did she get here from the most isolated continent on the planet?

Realising this, it was almost with fear that she asked "Fang, how did you get here from Oerba?"

Fang bit her lip, and Serah half wished that she could take back her words for how much they upset Fang, but she didn't because the question had to be asked. When Fang looked back up to her, Serah was surprised to see tears in her eyes. Not enough to even fall, but tears nonetheless. She had never seen Fang cry.

"Cocoon." The woman said, voicing the evil words with hate. Serah had to harden her resolve as tears began streaming down Fang's face. Haunted eyes shone dimly as she breathed the next part of her tale. "They burned everything, the whole village. Everyone died, and then they took us."

"Us, Fang who's 'us'." Serah cut in, hoping that Fang could register it, for wherever she was now it wasn't here. A part of Serah wanted to be proud that she'd manage to trick her into telling her everything, but the rest was just scared of those eyes. Those haunted eyes that spoke of a distant hell.

"Vanille." Fang muttered, in a tone void of emotion. Blinking to clear her eyes of the tears she began again. "I remember thinking that I saw hell in those flames, but I didn't know hell. Cocoon was the true hell. I found little solace there; Vanille and Jihl were my only comfort. I served that Corporation for ten years, I killed many people at their orders, and my hands will never be clean again. They are blood soaked evil because of them." Closing her eyes, Fang finally began to sob, and emotion seeped into her words at last. "I defected from them, and I left Vanille unprotected doing so, and now she's dead because of me Serah, dead. It's all my fault; I should have never left her."

Breaking down sobbing, Serah climbed onto the bed and wrapped her arms around her, cooing her softly she patted her back soothingly, "Shuu, it's ok sweetie, it wasn't your fault, you can't control life and death. It is something out of our control."

Holding the crying Fang in her arms until she was calm enough to talk again, Serah asked her softly, "What happened then sweetie, what happened when you came to Pulse?"

Holding back another sob, Fang answered falteringly, "Then I met her, Light."

"And what happened with Light then?" Serah asked, but Fang struggled in her arms when she asked the question and answered strongly,

"I don't want to talk about her."

Patting her hair softly as she held her, Serah jumped to another question, "Then can you tell me what else happened at Pulse sweetie?"

Resting her head in Serah's lap, the emotion faded from Fang voice once more and her eyes took on that haunted look again. "Pulse were nicer than Cocoon, bad not kinder. They sent us on a mission a couple months after I came here, me and Light, as well and ten others. It was practically a suicide mission."

Doing her best to keep a straight voice Serah asked. "And what happened on this mission sweetie?" Whatever Fang was going to tell her now had to be one of the major reasons for all her problems. She just hoped she was strong enough to hear it all.

The memory was alive behind Fang's eyelid as she sucked in a breath to steady herself. Opening her mouth she began to speak.

**…:…**

Blood dripped down the side of her face. Everything that could go wrong had. They had split up at the half way point like planned, with Light taking one group and her the other. But it had all been for nothing. Cocoon's people had been lying in wait, she didn't know how, she didn't know why, but they had known they were there. They had been tipped off somehow, whether it had been from some slip up during the mission or from a spy it didn't matter. Because half of her squad had been killed, and her and the two last remaining members were tied and bound as they were led deep into the bowels of Cocoon's Eden HQ.

Fang blinked as a drip of blood slivered down her eyelid. She felt pain from every inch of her body. She had been beaten raw with a metal pole, the two beside her no different. The two men that had been in the group were the unlucky ones; they had been killed almost as soon as the battle started, for the men who captured them made it obvious that they had no interest in them. The lone girl who had met her death had only done so because she had been killed in the heat of battle. They hadn't meant to kill her; they wanted to keep the girl's alive they said, they screamed better.

Their words chilled Fang, for she knew that they could only indicate one thing. She could fight the tugging chains held by her captives or even just stop walking completely, but it wouldn't halt their journey to where they were taking them. Their destination was an inevitable part of their future.

Fang blinked and the memory fast forwarded. She was thrust into a dank cell in some dark hallway far below ground level that was filled with the dismal stone structures. A man came in with her and forced her to the ground. He grabbed a pair of shackles that were connected to the ground and bound Fang's hands above her head. Grabbing the shackles by her feet he did the same with them before leaving the room and baring the door behind him.

Left alone, a solitary tear trickled down Fang's face. She knew what this place was, it was the torture chambers. The chambers that were built below all Cocoon HQs to torture Pulsian prisoners, either for information, or just for the sake of giving them a slow death. Biting her lip a single thought came to Fang before her weariness overwhelmed her.

She hoped Light was safe.

The next Fang woke many hours had passed. She had no device to tell her the time, or a window for light, but her weariness had subsided completely. The only problem, her body still ached horribly, and the slightest movement made it flare up in pain. Pulling uselessly on her bounds, she tested them. They held strong, far stronger then she had wished they would, but they weren't completely restrictive. She could still move somewhat with them, but no vast amount. Playing around with the shackles a little longer, she let her arms fall back to the ground. Closing her eyes to the stone room, she was made to open them again when she heard the sound of the door opening.

A figure walked closer to her from the doorway, but in the dim light she couldn't make out their features until they were right up close.

Her eyes widened as she recognised the man before her, "Rosch." she croaked, cursing how dry her throat had become without her noticing.

The man smiled, and took in the sight of the woman he held captive with glee. "Nice to see you too Fang, it's been awhile hasn't it?" He gave her a self-satisfied smile and laughed. He laughed, laughed and then laughed some more. Grinning he snarled, "Do you know for how long I've dreamt of doing this to you, having you at my whim. I could just slit your throat right now and be done with it."

Baring her teeth Fang glared back at the vile man with all the hate she possessed. In return he smirked, "Oh don't think I'm going to kill you, not at all, in fact-" he said kneeling down so that he lent over fang's chained body, "I think I'm going to have some fun with you."

He smiled evilly as Fang's eyes widened in realisation of what he was about to do. Struggling in her bounds she screeched in her panic, "No, no!"

"Words will do nothing to help you in this situation Oerban rat." Slipping his fingers insides the rim of Fang's pants and slowly pulled them down, Rosch ran his hands across her soft skin. Letting go of them when they got to her knees, he leaned forward and slid his hands behind her back. Struggling violently in his hold, Fang felt tears well up in her eyes. She didn't want this, anything but this; she would have taking getting shot in the head better than this. Anything but rape.

She flinched as the man placed a kissed on her neck. She tried to pull away from him but he held her in place. He hands worked their way back to her front and he tore her shirt open. Slipping his hand into her shirt he unclasped her bra and tore it off straps and all and flung it across the room. Groping her exposed breast with one hand, he started sucking on her neck, gradually working his way down to her chest. Slowly, he began to undo his fly.

Sobbing Fang pulled with all her might against the chains that held her, futilely, she yelled though her tears, "Stop, please stop I don't want this!"

Raising his lips from where they had found themselves sucking her tit, Rosch smiled, and whispered evilly, "And why would I do that Fang? I'm having too much fun." To re-enforce his hate to stop he pulled his face close to Fang's, "Too much fun indeed." And grabbed the back of her head and forced his tongue inside her mouth.

Screaming as his tongue explored the insides of her mouth, Fang began her struggles anew. Ignoring his victim's thrashes, the vile man began to strip his pant off, underwear and all. Throwing them away once he was rid of them, he let go of Fang for a second to take his shirt off. Now completely naked the man ripped off what was left of Fang shredded shirt, lifted her up and dived into her cleavage. Sucking on her breasts one of his hands roamed downward to grope her ass. Whimpering as she felt Rosch's hard manhood press into her, more tears began streaming down Fang's face. So far gone was she now that words were almost beyond her, "P-please don't." She sobbed brokenly.

Smiling like always Rosch lowered her back to the ground and held her arms above her head, "And what did I say about how I was having too much fun to stop Fang?" That said he began grinding his hips against hers.

Slowly, sensually did Fang feel him coming inside her. Sobbing desperately she repeated like a broken record, "Stop please, I don't want this, I don't want this."

"You've already said that Fang." Rosch dismissed her lightly. Grunting as he sped and thrust himself inside her.

She screamed when she felt his hot sexual organ come inside her. Whimpering she was too worn out to struggle further when Rosch let go of her arms. Leaning over her again Rosch's hand wandered all over her body, fondling her breast as his lips braced her neck and sucked, groping her ass and his tongue found its way back into Fang's mouth. Every inch of her body did he explore as he thrust his manhood in and out, in and out. He moaned as his tongue played with Fang's.

Fang blinked though her tears, she felt a sensation in her abdomen building and no matter how she fought, nothing stopping Rosch as he continued to thrust himself inside of her. She screamed as a sudden striking pain flared up from somewhere deep inside her. It made every thrust of his dick agony and she hissed in pain with every motion. But it didn't deter Rosch in the slightest, if anything, he sped up. And just as the pain was subsiding something worse happened. The feeling in her abdomen climaxed and with a final trust Rosch came inside her. Moaning in pleasure as he climaxed he dug his nails into her breast. Fang could find no strength in her to anything but scream.

Lying on top of Fang, panting, Rosch pulled himself out of her. Catching his breath he retrieved his clothes. Dressing fully the man got up and so to strip Fang of her last remaining dignity, he tore her pants off from around her knees. Leaving her completely naked, with nothing to cloth her but his saliva and cum.

Picking up Fang's torn clothes up from the floor of the cell Rosch went to leave, bidding her goodbye with the parting words, "I had fun today Fang, I'll definitely be back tomorrow." Then he walked through the door and left.

All alone Fang could do nothing but cry. She had let that man touch her! Touch her god damn it! He had come inside her and fucked her! Sobbing she berated herself for not being able to stop what which she couldn't. Staring up at the blank ceiling a tear dripped down at her face as she thought.

He had ruined her, completely ruined her.

The memory flashed forward again, so fast that only bits and pieces were legible. She saw the times when she was tortured for information that she refused to give them no matter how hard they drew the lash across her back. All the times Rosch had come to her cell periodically and raped her. The time he had horrified her by coming into her cell and dropping a lock of pink hair on her chest, telling her that that pink haired slut was dead. He hadn't even raped her that day; she had been too hysterical to attempt. There were others things too, vague things that she couldn't remember properly. Black points she called them, blanks in her memory where the only thing left of what was there was the knowledge that there had been something there. Nothing more. The black spots scared Fang, for without even knowing how she became sick, really sick, and angry and all sorts of other emotions that she couldn't even name.

And then on one day something in her snapped and she tore her chains from the ground. Then she strangled the man who came in to see what was happening. So they cut her leg off as punishment and burned the end of it to stop the bleeding. But she stole the fire and burned off the face of the man that did it. And taking the flame with her she escaped her cell after seven months of imprisonment. She didn't get too far though being out a leg, her hobbling injured body could only get her so far. But the Gods smiled upon her in the form of a man from the science department who went against Cocoon and sided with his integrity. He was a good man, who when he met her decided against handing her back to the torturers and imminent death, and instead helped her escape.

He took her to a secret safehouse of his. As it turned out he wasn't the most average Cocoon employee, and had helped many Pulsian spies who were injured in the past. But it was no disloyalty that fuelled those actions, just a good heart. When he took her to this safehouse he introduced himself as Cid. He also had a wife, a pretty woman with glasses called Shera. They took care of her, they couldn't do much for her sickness, but Cid created a bionic leg for her. As it was, bionics happened to be his specialty. It was just her luck that it had been him to find her, anyone else and her death would have been most likely sealed.

Unfortunately, new limb and all, her sickness only got worst. Until finally, Cid and Shera were forced to hand her back over to Pulse to help her. It was against her wishes, because by this point she couldn't give a crap about living or dying, but they didn't want her to die, so they went against her. Even at Pulse she wasn't much better off, and her sickness continued to worsen until it became her usual routine to slip in and out of a coma. It was just in the nick of time that they located the chemical in her blood that was making her ill. They all said it must have been planted there when she had been in the torture chambers, but she couldn't remember anything like that happening. So she put it down to being one of the black points.

After that she got better, and by the time she had recovered enough to form words many of her friends had gathered around her bed side. The memory was clear in her mind when she told them all that she wanted to die. It shattered all worlds, for she had been the last person they'd think would be saying things like that. No one but Cid came to visit her after that. It hurt a little at the time but she didn't care too much.

Soon she was released from hospital, and allowed to live life normally. But she would never be able to live normally again. Not after what happened to her, not after when getting raped multiple times a day by an uncountable number of different men became common place. Not after getting tortured til she succumbed to the pain and passed out. Not after that. Never again would she be sane.

Pulse offered her no help; they just branded her as a broken agent and cleaned their hands of her. If they gave her missions she'd do it, but no more, no less. In fact the only thing that stopped her from going to the roof and jumping off was one day when Cid came into her room with Fate.

He sat her down on the bed in front of her and told her, 'If Light was no longer around to be her mother, than why couldn't she be so in her place.'

**…:…**

Serah held Fang as the woman sobbed in her arms. Closing her eyes she laid her head atop Fang's. She'd always wondered what had damaged her so that she was the person she was today.

Now she knew.


	14. A strange duo

_Hello and welcome to the fourteenth chapter of Ignorance._

_Ok, this time around I've just been slack, I think there was this three week period where I didn't write at all. The first it was because I legitimately had assignments to do, but the others was me being lazy, specifically the last one. Then even though it was the school holidays and I wasn't doing anything, I still didn't write, mostly because I was obsessing over Shugo chara and Ikuto-sama. Stupidly it took me the whole of the anime and half way though the manga before I realised I was fan-girling over Ikuto. Despite that I was entirely aware that a couple episodes in he became my entire reason for watching the series. I woke up every day excited because it meant I could watch more Shugo chara and in turn Ikuto. Yeah, when I obsess, I REALLY obsess._

_You know though, I came on here to update this, but then I got distracted and read though some of my updated favourites. And one of the chapters was so big that even though I started reading it at around five, it took me up to now to read. That said, it's currently 9:42 at night. So pretty long. But it was so absolutely amazing that I have to tell everyone who's reading this to go read that story because its awesome and the authors a positively wonderful writer. It was 'Whispers of the gods 'by Raziel12. Also while your there if you do listen to this you should go ahead and read the rest of her stories, because they're all amazing. She is a big Light/Fang shippers if your not into that though, just as a warning._

_Anyway now that that's said, on with the story._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.**

* * *

><p><em><strong>A strange duo<strong>_

Serah lay awake on her bed staring up at the ceiling. All of her recent troubles were swimming around her head with dizzying speed. She blinked her eyes and the first one rose above the others and made itself known. Her reality, simple as that. There was more she could say about it of course, like how the casual darkness of this horrid place disgusted her. How corrupt the executives were, and how the agents didn't care to see that all of it was wrong. So many times already had they all told her to stay away from Fang. A black cat they called her, one of the broken agents. Someone she shouldn't even waste her time speaking to. Waste her time they said, personally Serah thought that such a term would be one better applied to them. They even spoke of Fate similarly. A little girl twisted by a situation she couldn't help, and they left her in the dark because they didn't care to see the truth of her.

The curious little darling followed Serah around like a ghost, speaking little but always there. Given, Serah could see some of the other agents issues with her, for she was the strangest girl her age that she had ever met. Calling her a darling was probably very peculiar too, but Serah didn't care about that. For to her she was one, strange demeanour and all. After knowing her for a little while she had seen who the girl really was, just that, a girl. One small girl not even six years old who wasn't given the same life as other girl's her age. So it'd made her something else, but it was something else that Serah found she could do nothing but adore. Even if she still had no idea who in the world the girl was.

Purging her lips Serah turned onto her side. The other agents didn't know what they were taking about. They had no idea who Fate was, and they had no idea who Fang was. They had no idea what had made them the way they were. The memory was still painfully clear in her mind of when she'd got Fang to open up to her about her time in the Cocoon torture chambers. They were most horrific memories the woman possessed, and it was clear how much the experience had distorted her mind. That was something no one but Fang herself could fully comprehend.

The ease with which she had actually gotten all of the information out of Fang had surprised her at first considering her initial resistance. But Fate enlightened her afterwards her that Fang was the type of person that when she got lost in her mind, you could get her to tell you anything. Serah found it interesting, for she wouldn't have pegged Fang for such a person if she hadn't been told.

Blinking her eyes, Serah closed them and sighed. For the moment this was all she could do, think. Today was the date that had been set for the operation that would take the chip out her brain that was causing her amnesia. It was giving her nothing but anxious thoughts. Try as she might, no matter how much she tried to dispel them they clung on. She could repeat to herself that this wouldn't change who she was, but another voice always said that it would. Even though deep down she knew it couldn't, for she was who she was, nothing could change that.

Inhaling and exhaling to calm herself Serah continued to lay on her in bed in wait. It wouldn't be so long now til she'd hear that door open, and someone would be there ready to take her up to the operating theatre. Opening her eyes, she waited for that time to come.

**…:…**

Lying on her bed with her arms folded behind her head propping her up, Fang let her mind wander. Fate was sitting in her room with her right now quiet as always. She was sitting in a lonely corner reading a book. Fang flicked her eyes to the ceiling as she thought about how much it messed with her that a girl that young could read so well. For a five year old she read like someone who was ten. Bloody hell the book she was reading was four and a half hundred pages long. Fang might even say she was jealous. She's never been a particularly good reader, seeing as it wasn't something that was seen important in Oerba. Not that they didn't have a form of writing of anything, it just wasn't heavily used. So not many people were efficient in it, but everyone was taught. And being made to go from barely knowing a script to being forced to be fluent in a completely different one didn't make you a good reader.

Sitting up she questioned the girl, "What ya reading?"

Looking up from her book, Fate answered, "Delirium."

Raising her eyebrows curiously, Fang asked her, "What's it about?"

"A world where love is a disease whose cure is mandatory when every citizen turns eighteen."

Lying back down Fang let herself think that over, "Sound…sad." And it did, a world without love is a world without connection and cherishment. A world with no meaning.

"It is." Fate concurred, "A world without love is a world without fear and hate. A sheltered world with no worth."

What a world that would be, Fang thought. Imagine living in a world where you could hold you first born child freshly born in your arms and feel nothing. This world had done her in yes, but she'd never trade it for anything if it meant giving up love.

"You're strange, where'd you find a book like that."

"In Nataliah's book collection. And also, I'm not the strange one, the author is. She is the one who wrote it. Given, I have to say it is one of the best forbidden love novels I have read in a while. Last couple ones I read, the price of love wasn't death."

"That so?" Fang mumbled, staring over at Fate from over the end of the bed, "You know I still think you're weird."

"And I think you're the weird one." The small girl shot back in her small voice.

"No, I'm quite sure the weird one is you." Fang argued back, having fun with their give and take now.

"We are both the weird ones then. Face it; that is the truth of all being. When you accept it all will be as it should."

Fang smiled slightly at Fate's obviously exaggerated reply. When their arguments, if they could be called that, got like that, those were always her type of replies. Utter nonsense made to sound true.

"Yeah." Fang agreed.

The time passed like that for a while, the only sound that rose being the noise of Fate as she turned the pages of her book. Quiet as a whisper the sounds would rise to life and then dissipate into nothing. That was until another sound burst into the room as the door knob turned and the door swung open.

Sitting up as a man walked into the room and stood by the door way, Fang frowned at him. She was in no mood to speak to anyone right now. Not being a stupid little dimwit Fate was excluded from the everybody list.

"What do you want?" She spat.

Hesitating, clearly cowered by Fang's harsh welcoming the man faltered before spitting out, "The superiors want to see you."

Lifting one eyebrow at the man, Fang breathed out a sigh, "That so?" she said to no one in particular. Getting off her bed she whispered to Fate as she walked past her, "Be back soon as I'm done talking to idiots."

Turning away from Fate, Fang ushered the man out the door, "Lead on." She said with a smirk, as the intimidated man followed her orders and backed out of the room. Waiting in the hallway for her, he left off in the direction of the top dogs, with Fang following silently in his wake.

**…:…**

Later Fang stood outside one of the rooms in the higher levels of the building mulling over what she had been told. She couldn't decide whether or not to be worried about it. Seeing as it had its negatives, but also its positives. It was a problem to Pulse, but also to Cocoon.

Purging her lips Fang pushed off the wall and began heading back in the direction of the elevators. All in all, it was definitely-

"Fang!"

Cid's voice broke Fang away from her thoughts. Turning around to see the man coming towards her she threw him a questioning look, "What is it?"

"Serah" he said, "She had the operation to take the chip out of her brain today, it finished a while ago now, she should be waking up soon, I was wondering if you wanted to go visit her."

Staring at him like he'd said something stupid Fang asked him, "Why, I knew she'd be out of the operation by now, doesn't mean I intended to go see her."

Taken by surprise by Fang's response Cid fought to regain control of his words but Fang cut him off. "Just because she's in the hospital is no reason to visit her. If something had gone wrong I would have been told, then that would be a reason. If everything's all right then why should I go? Now I just got told some very weird information from the top dogs so if you please I'm going to go back to my room so I can process it all."

Turning her back on Cid she walked away, leaving the man to stare at her back as she left him behind. As the sight of the woman faded in the distance Cid's face creased in sadness. To think, the woman who had sat by Lightning's bedside every day for months no matter what her condition had just said that to him. Frowning he wondered what had happened to that girl, and would he ever see her again?

Far away from Cid, Fang stood by the elevators pressing the button to go down. She thought of his question to go visit Serah as ridiculous. Why should she go visit someone who was fine?

And yet, why was it that when it came to pressing the button for her floor, she didn't press it, and instead pressed the button for 36? The medical level of the HQ. And why was it that once she got there she headed for room 24, the room Fate had told her in passing Serah would be taken to after her operation. And why was it that once she got there, she sat in a chair beside Serah's bedside and waited for the girl to wake. And most of all, why was she there ten minutes later in Serah's hospital room, when she opened her eyes.

She'd never know.

**…:…**

Coming back to wakefulness, Serah opened her eyes. Her first instinct was to scan through her mind to see if there were memories there that weren't before, but there wasn't any. Like she had been told, while the amnesia effect could no longer be produced without the chip, it wouldn't wear off for anywhere between a couple days to a few weeks. But that said, something did feel different, she couldn't remember anything, but her mind felt…clearer.

Groggily wiping her eyes, Serah jumped when she realised someone was sitting beside her.

"Fang!" she burst out in surprise when she caught sight of the woman.

Fang gave a small nod of acknowledgement and mumbled "Hey."

Blinking in surprise Serah said, "I didn't think you'd be here."

Shrugging her shoulders Fang admitted "Until a few minutes ago I didn't think I'd be either."

Lying back down Serah muttered "That so?"

Seeing Fang's gaze drift off to the other side of the room, Serah noticed how distracted she appeared to be. Staring at her a while longer she asked, "What are you thinking about?"

Purging her lips, Fang scratched her forehead tiredly, "Depends, do you know what a Vallian is?"

"No" Serah answered honestly, "What are they?"

"Haven't the slightest idea." Fang replied offhandedly, "Some people say they're experiments gone wrong others say they're monsters. Far as I'm concerned they just a bunch of freaks. They're these weird black haired people with dark skin that go around messing with the corporations."

"That sounds…strange." Serah cut in.

"Yeah well," Fang shook her off, "You can hear weirder things if you stick around here long enough."

Pausing for a second or so, Serah spoke again, "So what do they have to do with what's bothering you?"

"Well, you see there's this Vallian duo going around right now doing a lot more than just messing with the corporations. They've only gone for Cocoon so far but what they're doing is planned, well thought out and crippling. They even managed to cause a huge information leak that even got to normal media. Of course Cocoon managed to cover it up fast and everyone who knows of it thinks whoever gave them the information is insane. But that's not what matters, what matters is that they could do it in the first place."

Sitting up in bed now Serah's curiosity was aroused, "This is bad right?"

"Yeah," Fang replied, "It doesn't matter if they're only going for Cocoon, if they fall so do we. Cocoon and Pulse are too closely entangled now to avoid that."

Looking straight ahead Serah mulled that over. Turning to Fang again she asked," And do you know what this duo is calling themselves."

"Yeah," Fang replied steadily, letting her gaze drift over to where Serah was in the bed.

"They call themselves-"

**…:…**

The Cocoon agent fell down dead at the woman's feet as she drew the knife from his gut. Wiping the blood off the blade on his clothes she straightened up and faced her companion. The taller woman in front of her flashed a smirk as she pushed her black hair off her shoulders and said, "All good Elisarr?"

Returning the smirk with a big smile the younger woman walked forward to the now open safe in the middle of the room. Reaching down she picked up all the priceless Cocoon documents from inside its broken shell, "Never better Marla."

* * *

><p><em>I forgot Elisarr's name a long time ago, so that's not what her name is meant to be. It's just the best and closest to the original I could come up with on short notice. It did start with E at least. I also forgot Vallian even longer ago, I changed it three times throughout the chapter and I think scarily I actually got it right the third time. <em>

_Fate was reading 'Delirium' because it's the book I finished a day before finishing the rest of the chapter (Started it at the start of the holidays and then left it like that.) It's by Lauren Oliver if any one ever wants to read it. It pretty god damn good actually, a lot better than I thought it would be. I was worrying if it would be like one of those lovey dovey puketastic vampire novels one of friends keeps reading, but it wasn't. It more like that Hunger games government control everything sort of thing. And Fate wasn't lying, in the book the price of Love really is death. It's a very interesting concept._

_Also for any who read the top Authors note, my all out obsessing with Shugo chara was only happening in the holidays when I was watching five times my usual amount of anime a day. So it's not like I spent a long time happy to wake up because it meant I could watch more, I only did that for about a week and a half. I realise that's still probably rather insane. But your free to think that, it doesn't bother me._

_Anyway, Please review I'll give you virtual cookies._


	15. A name of curse

_Hello everyone and welcome to the fifteenth chapter of Ignorance._

_Good thing, but after this chapter this proper storyline start (After only 70,000 + words) Sorry though if I don't update much in the coming weeks because even though it's the holidays I have a friend that's probably going to be coming over 90% of the time and she'll distract me from writing. I apologise times one thousand in advance._

_Hope you like the chapter._

_Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does._

* * *

><p><em><strong>A name of curse<strong>_

Months past, and Serah settled into a routine at Pulse scarily faster then she would have liked. Life without the chip in her brain wasn't entirely different, just not quite the same. She remembered things, things from when she was a little kid. Little events and flashes, but nothing that important. She remembered the faces of friends and people she used to know, but for some reason could never really recollect what their name had been. And in time she remembered most of her memories from before her time at Pulse.

She hadn't been anyone special, just a young girl in an institution, but she had been a kind one. Which was a relief, for she was scared that she mightn't have liked who she had been. 'Topaz' hadn't really differed from her former personality at all, but she was perhaps more quick to anger. With both personalities she hadn't been as naive as she may have looked. As Serah her lackadaisical childhood had taught her that nothing ever went quite the way you wanted it to go. And Topaz just didn't hold naive values. She wasn't someone who thought the world was perfect, even if you couldn't see the imperfections, she knew they were there. When Serah thought back over it she guessed that that may of been a throwback ideal of hers from before they inserted the chip.

Her memories of Pulse on the other hand, weren't the same. They had never really come back to her, not clearly at least. She knew the basic summary of them at best. Pulse's scientists couldn't explain why they were like that, for in theory they should be there along with all her others. Maybe not as clear as they once were but certainly there. Though they did skip the possibility, as Fate had mentioned to her in passing one afternoon, that it was just a case of her suppressing them. She wasn't about to argue with that hypothesis, for she didn't really want those memories back anyway. The Pulse memories she could remember were bad enough as it was. She didn't want to imagine having all of them.

Closing the book in her hands Serah stopped her musing. In her personal opinion, her memories were fine as they were, no matter how incomplete, so she saw no reason in worrying over them.

Looking up she spied Fate sitting cross-legged on a wooden chair across from her. They were in Serah's room sitting alone. Fate, like always, was reading. It weirded Serah out how much a girl her age could read. Considering when she was her age her own reading talents could hardly be considered legible. It was one of the downsides of growing up in an institution like she did. Placing her book down on her bedside table Serah had to concede that if there was at least one good thing kids got here at Pulse, it was a good education. Though the many negatives still outweighed the positives.

Pushing stray strands of hair behind her ear, Serah thought of what she could do now to use up her time. The book on the table was as of now finished. It hadn't been a bad book, but it hadn't been one that you couldn't put down either.

Bugging Fang was out of the question, for certain reasons she didn't like to think about. It was why Fate was hiding out in her room as opposed to Fang's. The girl preferred to avoid contact with the other agents. She was too strange to them to associate with her. It brought a sad frown to Serah's face to think about it, but the girl's weird upbringing and her subsequent personality made it hard for her to get along with people. It'd make life hard for her.

Blowing out a sigh Serah sat up against the wall. Tapping her fingers against her thigh she continued to ponder how to pass the time. Sitting up suddenly she made her choice. Getting up off her bed she told Fate, "I'm going to go for a little walk OK?"

Fate nodded and returned to reading her book. Her eyes had reflected the slightest hint of concern. She didn't like going outside the safe confines of her room or that of Serah or Fang's, for more than the reason of her poor social skills. But Serah had yet to comprehend all of them.

Hand on her door knob Serah picked up her jacket from where she had thrown it and put it on. It was a little cold outside of her room.

Walking through the halls with no clear destination in mind Serah caught the eyes of many people staring at her as she walked by. If the whole Cocoon-spying fiasco surrounding her hadn't attracted the curiosities of her fellow agents, then her relationship with Fang had.

Some people had known her before she had been sent to Cocoon and had been forced to go into hiding. They all called her a nice girl, and girl they never thought would dirty herself by giving a minute of her time to a broken agent. So of course to them, she was the one in the wrong. Not that she had done anything. All she had done was extend her friendship to someone who life hadn't been kind to. Not that the token of friendship had been requited but Serah wasn't going to leave Fang's side for something as simple as that. She had never expected friendship of the woman in the first place. If the other agents decided to dislike her for something so little, who cares?

Their opinions of her did nothing to her view of herself. She was who she was and no matter how many bad names they called her, they would never change who she was. A good person, something they were not.

Moving through the halls silently Serah paid no more notice to the stares and drew her jacket closer around her. It was colder than she thought it was going to be.

**...:...**

Another day, another situation. Serah was walking quietly through the halls once more. Today was another day when visiting Fang was out of the question. Again for a reason she didn't like to voice, always for a reason she didn't like to voice. Fate was hiding out in her room again reading and when Serah had tired of that mundane routine she had once again taken to the halls. Only that this time when she returned to her room afterwards it didn't go quite like it always did. When she opened the door to her room, someone else was there.

Walking into the room Serah's eyes flitted to Fate, but upon seeing that the girl was having no reaction to the man she surmised that he was no threat. Taking a step closer she looked at the man's face and realised she knew him. Hesitating momentarily she said, "You." Her wording was confident but an unsure tinge to it revealed to the man that she couldn't recall his name.

Smiling slightly to put her at ease, he outstretched his hand for her to shake. "Cid." He told her shaking her hand, "I wouldn't have expected you to remember it too well seeing as we've only met once or twice." But that was where his smile faltered.

That was what immediately tipped Serah off that something was wrong, and she no longer felt that he wasn't necessarily a threat. Steeling herself for what might be to come, she asked Cid, "What are you doing here?"

Cid's face took on a somewhat guilty expression. Staring at her square in the eyes he assured her, "I am here on my own free will, I wasn't told to come here. I just thought it would be better if I was the one to tell you this."

"Tell me what?" Serah cut in.

"That pulse want you to return to action." He said wiping his voice of any previous hesitance.

Under his hard stare Serah felt herself struck by fear. Though she kept it off her face and out of her voice, those words scared her. She had taken well to her training yes, much better than she would have thought possible and she was in theory more than well enough to undertake a mission. But failing out in the field last time had cost her dearly. Relationships had been shattered along with her memories, and although new ones had been forged since, nothing could make up for what she had lost. In both her memories and current life. But the worst thing of all which rested in her chest like a frozen icicle. The knowledge that next time such a mistake wouldn't be tolerated, no matter the circumstances.

Taking in a deep breath Serah tried to continue her conversation with Cid as if she wasn't paralysed by fear, but he saw through her blank continence.

"What happened to you last time wasn't your fault; it wasn't you who blew your cover. You were successful in your missions many, many times before you were sent to spy on Cocoon." Trying to give a smile to sooth her over, he took a couple steps towards the door until he was standing by her side. "Just remember that no matter how scared you are, what those men will ask of you is entirely in your power to complete. No matter what you think."

He reached out to grab the doorknob but Serah grabbed hold of his arm before he could grip it. Turning her head so that he was within her sights she asked, "Why are you here telling me this?"

Making an odd sound in his throat, he took a moment to explain. "Because I wouldn't of been here to tell you that tomorrow. Your sister and Fang you see, are people I did, and still do, hold close. And the executive's inconsiderate nature broke your sister and sent her to her death, and left Fang's mentality to crumble to dust in her wake. It would break me to see that happen to you as well, so when they summon you to the higher levels tomorrow and are staring down at you like your some chest piece on a board, please remember what I told you. For the sake of both of us." Pulling his arm out of her grip he gave her a sad smile and took his leave.

Watching the door as it shut behind him, Serah finally turned her eyes on Fate and realised, that not once during the previous conversation had she looked up from her book.

**...:...**

Wondering through the halls an hour or so after her talk with Cid, Serah found herself wandering closer and closer to Fang's room. She hadn't meant to, but her feet just eventually took her there of their own free will.

But once she turned the doorknob to her door she knew she shouldn't have. Because today was a bad day, and nothing was going to make it good. So she stood just outside of Fang's doorway with the door slightly ajar and stood watching her for a time. Anyone else may have thought she was just sleeping, but Serah knew she wasn't. Closing the door with too much force Serah walked off cursing herself for even allowing herself to come near here. No matter how much she wanted to, or even needed to confide in Fang right her words would of never reached her.

Because just like she was hours ago when Fate had come to Serah's room, Fang was still high, her world dominated by the hazes of Seohilen.

**...:...**

Tomorrow came, and with it Serah's preordained meeting with the executives. A man came down to lead her to the room it was to take place in. The room he took her to was a small square shaped space in the higher levels of the HQ in which sat two people. Sitting down the man left and the fatter of the two men in front of her introduced himself.

Reaching out his hand for her to take she shook it, "Names Robert Chennix." He intoned. The movement to talk made his fatty chins jiggle, and Serah thought that it made him look like a dugong.

The man beside Robert didn't bother to tell her his name and got right down to business. Tapping his fingers on a piece of paper he held in his hands he spoke up without any buffer. "We want you to go on a spying mission for us."

Instinctively freezing up upon hearing those words Serah tried to open her mouth to say something but the man cut her off, "No need to worry, this mission is nothing like your last one." Though he spoke words of reassurance nothing of the sort existed in his voice.

Handing her the paper in his hands she took it and read over it. While she did the man continued speaking, "We want you to sneak into the house of an important Cocoon executive disguised as something simple. A house hand perhaps, we've been told this particular executive has been looking for one as of late. The exact details of this mission will be finalised the closer it comes to its commencement."

Partly listening to him as she scanned down the page of information Serah took in the most important details. This man didn't live in Bodhum but elsewhere, but he had a holiday house here that he frequented with his family often. Which was where he was now, and would be where she would be set to spy on him

Setting the paper down on the table she let the thinner man take it back. Placing it back on his side of the table he finished what he had to say, "You will be called back here when the details are finalised and given a date when you are to set out. It will be soon so be prepared." Giving her a final nod he gestured for her to leave.

Pushing back her chair she mumbled a feeble goodbye and got out of there. Walking back towards the door she couldn't help but think that the other man's presence there had been unneeded. But even so, Serah thought, despite not adding anything to the conversation it had been him, not the unfeeling man by his side, who had stared at her so much so, like she was just a chest piece on a board. Not even human. Just like Cid had said.

**...:...**

Fang lay on her bed on her side. Wrapping her hands around her pillow tightly she tried to ignore Fate's presence behind her. The girl had come here without a book today, which meant that her stay in her room wasn't to hide from the stares of the populace like always. This time she had come here with a much more serious topic of thought. But she didn't speak of it, not for a long time. She just sat there, and with good reason. For to speak it was to utter poison into the air, and let it infect all it touched and taint them with sorrow.

Only it couldn't be kept locked up forever. Eventually Fate's eyes settled on Fang and she said without faltering at all, "They're sending Serah on a mission."

Blinking, Fang muttered "I know." And it made her sick to her stomach.

**...:...**

A day or so Later and Fang found herself in a room with a total of fourteen other agents and five executives. Serah was yet to be sent out.

Twiddling her fingers she tried to ignore the feeling of people staring at her. She hated being sent on missions with other people. She'd always preformed better by herself anyway, even before she started to hate everyone who looked her way. But her own thoughts couldn't change anything; this was a mission that needed lots of people. Experienced people.

"Now." One of the executives spoke up, "In a few days one of the Leaders of Pulse is going into town to conduct a speech to the populace, and it is suspected as we have been told by our spies that Cocoon will attempt to assassinate them or do them any great harm if they cannot. You will be sent out five days from now with them and dispatched to a number of locations surrounding the square that the speech is to take place. Is that clear?"

Most of the agents around the room muttered replies but as Fang saw there were a few more...cynical... agents who didn't bother to. These people were some of the twisted agents who had spent most of their lives if not all of them, working for Pulse. Agents like her, who while not quite right in the head, were deadly with any form of weapon. So in short, just the people for the job.

With the main summary over with from there on in the details of each agents task to carry out was outlined and the small details not to be missed were given out and clarified.

After everything was done and over with all the agents left, leaving all that had to be done was wait for the five days to be up, and their mission to begin.

**...:...**

On the day of Serah's mission a man came to her room to fetch her. The man she was meant to be spying on lived in the expensive part of town, so even if she was just to go there as a helper she was expected to look her best. She was made to wear a black pencil skirt which she took to with hate because of the way it constricted her legs. And a neat conservative top that went to her elbows.

Finishing up by tying her hair up in a pony tail she followed the man out. He took her into the parking lot and to a slim lined black car. He got in with her to her surprise and closed the door behind them. Though the reason for this was quickly cleared up as he took out a few sheets of paper that had on them some of the important details of the mission and went through them with her one last time.

At the end of the drive the car stopped outside of a gorgeous white two storied house that had a beautiful balcony and an assortment of different flowers and plants flourishing in the garden. Opening the door and getting out, Serah walked daintily towards the front door. But she was only halfway to it when she heard the sound of the car door opening again. Looking over her shoulder she saw the man who had got in the car with her.

Seeing that he looked a little distressed she asked him curiously, "What is it?"

"I almost forgot to tell you, but there's going to be a very important Pulse official here in a few days, so please by careful."

"Oh" Serah mumbled, not seeing what all the fuss was all about. "Ok then, what's their name."

" It's Anima."

* * *

><p>Hope you enjoyed the chapter.<p>

I'll keep trying to update throughout the holidays but I can't promise you much.

Please review I'll love you for it.

~Claire Kreiss.


	16. In wake of the disaster

_Hello everyone and welcome to the sixteenth chapter of Ignorance. I'm so sorry for not updating sooner but I've been completely overloaded with assignments this year (Seriously, by that I mean I haven't free of assignments since March- it's currently August.)_

_This chapter itself has been done for a while, but my Beta's in the same boat as me and wasn't able to get around to editing it. She's only got a practical to do now, yet meanwhile I've still got two assignments and a Textiles practical. I hate school on the best of days. After those I've got two weeks of tests too. But I can't have any assignments on the holidays so I'm completely free to write as much as I want. Which is bloody amazing after six solid months of assignments._

_Also I'm on work experience right now and I've set up my days so I can do school work but still write, so if all goes well I should have the next chapter out by the end of next week. Once again I'm so sorry about not being about to update, I feel so horrible about keeping you waiting for so long._

_**READ THIS!** sorry, that was only for people who don't read author's notes. My beta has informed me that she had trouble remembering who Elisarr and Marla were in this chapter. She told to try and tell their background story more but there was only so much I could do, so I'm writing this here. Marla and Elisarr were two Cocoon dissenters who appeared in an earlier chapter. There were rumours being spread about two rebels breaking into Cocoon's places and steeling files before leaking them to every possible source to try and reveal Cocoon's bad nature. Not that many people believe what's on the files though. At the end of last chapter Marla shot and killed Anima._

_If you're reading this story when all the chapters Marla and Elisarr have appeared in to date are all posted together and you remember them, then that paragraph was probably useless for you. I'm just trying to help out those who were in my Beta's position._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Sqaure Enix does.**

* * *

><p><em><strong>In wake of the disaster<strong>_

Fang opened her eyes slowly and let them adjust to her surroundings. The carnage around her was immense, buildings blown to bits, the square in ruins. In the clearing dust she saw countless dead bodies, the air was gradually filling with their horrid scent. In all, after the first one she'd counted ten bombs in the immediate area, another twenty five or thirty further out. Whoever instigated the attack must have wanted to wipe this town of the map.

'_Well,'_ fang though,_ 'they'd certainly achieved that.' _

Trying to get up she winced as the cuts and scrapes she'd received responded to the movement. All in all, she wasn't that badly hurt, as the block behind her had covered her from the greater force of the bomb closest to her. Yet there was a gash down her leg that was worrying. Not much she could do about that in this situation unfortunately.

Moving away from the ruined block she began to limp across the square. There were a few people she thought might have been alive, just unconscious, but most were dead. Occasionally she saw someone conscious and standing, but they seemed to be civilians, and looked completely fucked up. Too shell-shocked to even move from were they were standing. Not that Fang cared, she was long past the years where carnage of any degree bothered her. All she had to care about was getting away from here and treating the gash on her leg so it didn't get infected.

Once, she passed a young boy with silver hair sitting in front of some corpse. His eyes were completely blank void of all emotion. He didn't even seem to be looking at the dead man in front of him. Even Fang had admit the sight was harrowing. She made saw not to look back upon it.

She left it and the square far behind her.

**…:…**

When Serah came to she shook her head to clear it and took a look at her surroundings. What she saw stole whatever scream she may have made. It was too horrible to voice in a scream and do it justice. Everywhere she looked there was destruction. When she realised with horror that this included dead bodies, she had to suppress nausea.

Scanning the whole area she only saw a few people alive, all looking scared out of their minds or too shocked to move a muscle. The sight of a little girl crying out for her mother brought tears to her eyes. Shakily getting up she brushed a hand by her head and winced. Pulling her hand away she saw there was blood on it. Now that she paid attention to it, there was a lot of blood near her left temple, whatever hit it must have been what knocked her out. Looking back at the wreckage of the building behind her she became amazed by how she was even alive. The overhead cover had collapsed and crushed others underneath it. Seeing a single hand sticking out from beneath the ruin she failed to hold back her nausea. Falling to her knees she wretched on the concrete by her feet. Vomiting until the nauseous feeling in her stomach alleviated, she got back up on her feet.

There must be others alive, there had to be. She would find them.

Leaving the sight of the crushed dead behind her she ran into the destroyed square. One after the other she checked on the people she found. Trying to rouse them and checking for pulses. Most were dead, some showed felt signs of life but didn't respond to her at all. She grew frantic when her effort were proving fruitless but she didn't give up, not yet, she couldn't.

After a time, she saw something that made he stop dead. Taking a few steps more she knelt down. Before her lay Bartholomew, staring up at the sky with sightless eyes. Of all the things she had seen in the past few minutes this one struck a personal cord. Bartholomew may have for all intents and purposes been her enemy, and she his, but he was a good man. He had no reason to die. She just wished Hope never saw this sight, if the boy wasn't already dead too.

Taking in a deep breath to calm herself she closed Bart's eyes and moved on.

She continued to try and rouse people one after another, few responding to her, alive or dead. Those breathing strong she felt safe to leave without trying to wake them.

Soon there was another sight that stopped her on her tracks, there was someone on the ground across from her, someone she knew. Rushing to the spot she fell to her knees and checked their pulse. It was strong, and so was their breathing. She wouldn't have needed to check their pulse to know they were alive, she was just so skittish. Taking in a deep breath Serah calmed herself down and continued to sit, too scared to try to wake them.

Unaware of her presence, Snow continued to breathe on in peace.

**…:…**

Marla winced. The blast of the bomb had thrown her far and gifted her with some nice gashes across her left shoulder. Still, at least she was alive, and Elisarr hadn't take too long to find her having escaped damage herself.

Staring up at the building from where the first bomb had been dropped she knew with certainty that it was Cocoon's people who did this. Forty two bombs had been dropped in all according to Elisarr. Just like Cocoon, Marla thought with contempt. Likely this had been done to kill Anima. They'd just blame it on a terrorist attack most likely, say they'd been planning this for years. The same old bullshit.

It wasn't even needed, since she'd personally put a bullet through the bitches brain herself. All the carnage and casualties that surrounded her were all useless. Wincing again as Elisarr probed one of her shoulder wounds, she told her worryingly, "We're going to have to find some place to wash these out. Otherwise they'll get infected."

Nodding Marla replied, "Yeah, yeah. Easier said than done."

The place was a disaster zone. All corpses and exploded buildings. Good luck finding some disinfectant. Water would do she guessed, if they could find a clean source. There used to be some fountains around but who knew how much of them were left intact after this.

Getting up Marla scared Elisarr who tumbled to the side.

"Let's go." She ordered.

Throwing a look at their surroundings Elisarr inquired, "Where?" Not at all thrown off by her tone.

"Anywhere." Marla answered curtly.

But Elisarr didn't think about it twice, she was use to Marla's snappy talk. Her anywhere meant away from this danger zone and possibly find some water to wash out her cuts. The way she walked in front of her meant 'stay behind me, there's danger.' And more quietly in an undertone, it said, 'I'm worried, stay close.'

Marla wasn't someone who expressed herself in words, she used her actions. So no matter her tone Elisarr knew she meant well.

Following Marla's tall form across the square the two of them slowed as they closed in on the edge of the square.

Edging cautiously around a ruin of a building Marla scanned the area ahead of them with eyes like a hawk, "Clear." She breathed.

Elisarr followed along like this as the two of them danced around debris and bodies. As they marched through the disaster zone she felt an increasing feeling of anticipation building up in the pit of her stomach which made her fingers curl around the gun on her hip.

Gravel crunched behind them and a gunshot flew by Elisarr's head. Without a moment's notice she pulled the gun from her hip and fired. The gunner blew off his feet and hit a cracking wall dead. Marla gave him a passing look.

"Cocoon agent." She said quick, leaving the site and moving on.

Elisarr gave the dead man a fleeting look and went after Marla. The man behind her confirmed a fear she'd been having, and she was sure Marla was already sure of. Cocoon had agents here to shoot survivors. They must be paranoid, Elisarr thought, there were few people in this city who could confirm it was Cocoon who did this. Such as Cocoon dissenters like them. To kill everyone, well, it was overkill. Many innocents would die here today. Holding a hand to her chest Elisarr wished safety for those who had survived. She hated innocents getting caught up in the corporation's trouble.

She and Marla continued their cautious dance through the city, until they came upon a fountain. Some of it had cracked and fallen away, so water was flowing out onto the street, but it was still working. Sitting on the unbroken side of the fountain Marla cupped her hands and held them under the spray. Pouring the water over her shoulder she tried to wash out her wound. Sitting by her Elisarr put a hand by her shoulder.

"Let me."

Cupping her hands she filled them with water and poured them over Marla's shoulder. She repeated this process until she had cleaned out most of the dirt. There wasn't much more they could do for now. Tearing off some of her skirt she handed it to Marla, "Here, tie this over it."

"Thanks." Marla murmured taking the scrap of fabric and tying it like a bandage around her shoulder.

Staring off in the distance Elisarr asked, "What do we do now?"

"Don't know. Escape the city. Not much more we could do in a situation like this." Marla answered.

Seeing Elisarr pull a sad face, Marla told her, knowing what was on her mind, "We can't do anything to help the civilians, unless you're on the mood to kill every Cocoon agent in this city. If they aren't dead already, Cocoon'll see to them. We have to care about ourselves for now." Looking Elisarr in the eyes, she added in a kinder tone, "But I'll help you pray for their safety, as I'm sure you've done a thousand times already."

Her last line seemed to work a bit, though the rest of what she'd said was troubling. Elisarr nodded, "I know, I get it." She told her, "We have to survive first."

Marla nodded, "Yes, and for that we need to get moving."

Without another word the women got up and began to leave the fountain behind her. Slipping off it Elisarr followed her.

The city was sizable, so reaching its edge was no walk in the park, and there were Cocoon agents every step of the way with guns ready. Unfortunately for them of course Marla and Elisarr were twice as prepared with fingers on the trigger. Their brains decorated the concrete before they knew what hit them. Literally.

Noon wore into afternoon and both Marla and Elisarr jumped as someone's screams rent the air. They presumed it was a civilian come into the contact with a Cocoon agent, so as they didn't see them surviving five more seconds, it took five seconds longer for them to rush over to the source of the screams when they didn't stop.

Halting abruptly at the railing of a walkway overlooking a water system the women saw a nasty looking man kicking and shooting at a steel barrel. A boy's screams were exploding from within the steel prison. Marla shot the man in the head.

Jumping over the railing and landing in the water system she approached the barrel. Elisarr dropped down after her and walked up to the barrel. Kneeling down Marla looked into the barrel. Inside sat a young boy with silver hair staring past her without seeing her at all. His knees where drawn up to his chest and his arms were wrapped around them so tight they were turning purple. His entire body spoke of fear, yet it was his eyes that disturbed Marla.

In all her life she'd seen many horrific things, yet few could measure up to the complete emptiness she saw in his eyes. They were nothing. They saw nothing. All was blank.

Marla had to gulp down her shock as she lifted her right hand to reach out to the boy. He withdrew in fear, and Marla snapped her hand back. She'd almost forget, but her right arm would only serve to scare him more. Her actually arm was long gone, in its place set a bionic prosthetic. It didn't even have fake skin to make it look more real, just bare robotics. The only good thing was that the cords were all covered so she could pass it off a normal prosthetic, just.

Waiting a couple seconds before trying again, she laid her human hand on his knee.

"Hey," She comforted, "it's alright, he's gone, you're safe. You can come out if you want to."

When the boy didn't respond she passed a look back to Elisarr, and gently took hold of his hand. Pulling on it softly she got him to get out of the barrel. But he still stared off into the distance, unseeing. For all her steel Marla couldn't stand seeing kid in a state like this. Those eyes scared her.

"What your name?" she asked him.

The boys lips moved, but no sound came out. Unnervingly, Marla thought he'd meant to say 'I'm no one.'

Dropping his hand Marla mumbled under her breath, "Scum." Fuck Cocoon. Fuck the world that could do this to a kid.

* * *

><p><em>Hope you enjoyed the chapter.<em>

_I'm a little unconfident in how I ended it, I hope it wasn't too bad._

_I should be able to get the next chapter out faster. I might get slowed up a bit when the tests are on but the holidays are all mine._

_Please review, I'll appreciate it greatly._

_Bye for now._


	17. Waiting for the dawn

_Hello everyone and welcome to the seventeenth chapter of SSI. I'm sorry for posting this late since I promised it two weeks back, but yearly tests started and I didn't have time to write. Good things is I managed to write two chapters in the time it usually takes me the write one. So if I complete a full loop by the end of the holidays the next chapter shouldn't be too hard to get out. If all goes well (and it usually doesn't for me) I should have the next chapter out within a month. Which is good because I'm looking forward to writing the next chapter._

_Anyway hope you enjoy the chapter._

**Disclaimer: I do no own Final Fantasy, square Enix does. **

* * *

><p><em><strong>Waiting for the dawn.<strong>_

The sun was beginning to set. The day had worn on, noon bled into afternoon until the sky began to burn orange. The air caught a chill, which nipped at a person's skin. The danger of the bombing affair had yet to reside.

Marla kept watch over the young boy her and Elisarr had found. He hadn't spoken a word and his face remained blank, yet he presented no problem in following where they led him. Marla's only challenge now was to find a place to wait out the night. The night had turned cold, and she and Elisarr were weary from trekking around the city all day. The boy must have been too. The difficulty came in locating a secure location. There wasn't much in the region. Many houses around them had been destroyed by bombs or by the force of the blasts.

Gnawing on her thumb she contemplated possible solutions. Coming out with none she turned to her companion.

"Where's somewhere safe we can wait out tonight?"

Elisarr pursed her lips, thinking. Looking up at the street ahead of them she mused aloud, "There's not many options, so much around here is too beat up to offer protection." She continued to think it over, scratching her chin. Raising her eyes again she suggested, "We could head over to the department store that's northwest of here. If it's still standing we could lock ourselves in a storeroom, no one will find us there."

Running the suggestion through her head, Marla conceded, "We don't have much of a choice, there's nothing else around here." Getting up from where she sat she ordered, "Let's go."

Coaxing the silver haired boy to follow her, Marla and Elisarr set off in a north-westerly direction.

The department store when they found it was surprisingly, perfectly intact. But that's where the good news ended. It hadn't been hit by a bomb yes, but Cocoon had been ready for the civilians inside to try and evacuate the area.

Marla scrunched her nose up when the smell of death hit her. The car park was littered with dead bodies. Beside her Elisarr pulled an expression as if she was going to be sick. The two of them were use to a few casualties, but those casualties were smaller and had died for some reason at least. These were needless, completely useless deaths.

Marla pulled the young boy closer to her so he didn't have to see the worst of them. Slowly the group walked to the entrance of the store. They entered and now it was Marla turn to fil nauseous. On the big screens at the start and end of the line of shops were evacuation notices and the paths the civilians were meant to take to get out. Everything was as it had been left. Marla made sure to move off quickly. She didn't want to look at it any longer. "Let's find somewhere to rest." She snapped.

Elisarr did as she was asked and began looking for a store with an appropriate back room to hide away in. After checking couple stores they entered one. It was a pet store, and had a fair sized back room with a good lock. As Marla cleared the way of fallen store products. Elisarr kneeled by the glass animal enclosures. A brown puppy played with its brothers and sisters, completely unaware of the troubles of the human world. Looking forlornly over the tiny animal Elisarr jumped as the silver haired boy sat beside her. It was the most self-aware act he'd committed all day.

He stared at the puppies with Elisarr for a time until he surprised her even more by talking. "Are they going to die too?" He asked flatly.

The dark question put Elisarr off a bit but she saw no reason to indulge the kid with white lies, "Yes." She answered.

The boy nodded, his face wasn't as blank anymore but his eyes still reflected a world of haunted pain.

When Marla called for them to come over the kid only moved when Elisarr got up and dragged him to the storeroom by the arm. They entered and Marla closed the door behind them and locked it. Hopefully no Cocoon agents were going to look in here for survivors.

The boy sat down where Elisarr placed him and didn't make any further sound. Marla watched him worriedly. Despite her hard exterior, Marla had an exceptional soft spot for kids. It was the reason why she was going out on a limb to help the guy, despite the danger they themselves faced. Her eyes spoke volumes on how she feared for the kid's crumpled mental state. It was something they both wondered, what had made him so void inside.

The question he'd asked Elisarr earlier had perhaps hidden a clue in it. When he asked if the puppies were going to die he'd said 'too'. That could be interpreted that either he'd seen heaps of people die, or just someone in particular. Either one might have been more than enough to provoke this reaction if the situation had been right. But she'd never know for sure unless the boy told her, and she wasn't hoping for a miracle like that.

Whatever the boy had seen, he was keeping it to himself. Knowing that, she settled in for the night.

**…:…**

Fang felt the hard asphalt scrunch under her feet. She held a gun steady at her side, ready for whatever the bomb zone would throw at her. She's clicked on fast that Cocoon was murdering the survivors, so she thought she'd repay the gift by giving every one of their agents she saw a bullet in their brain. She thought it was fitting repayment. If they were kind enough to invite her to this hell bath then she didn't want to be rude.

She tapped the gun on her leg in boredom. The day had almost worn away and she was yet to locate any safe places to hide away if she wanted to get some sleep.

She tossed a couple ideas around in her head of where she could go but couldn't find a suitable one. So she decided to just continue walking until she found someplace. But lucky for her, the heavens seemed to be kind to her just for today. She found a bank three blocks away. It was still perfectly alright, and she reasoned that it must have somewhere inside it good for hiding. Banks had plenty of bitch locks.

Striding her way through the entranceway she busted the door to get behind the counter. She looked around for somewhere good. The place would have probably had a room for safety deposit boxes, but those places tended to be locked from the outside. Thinking about it she recalled most Bodhum banks operated their locks by a remote control carried by some authoritative figure. Fang scratched her head, if she had the control it'd put the safety deposit room back on the cards.

She looked back to the room beyond the counter. She'd past corpses on the way in, some of them were clothed in the uniform of the bank. It was possible that one of them was the one which held the control. Walking back through the door from the counter she looked over the dead bodies. She thanked her lucky stars again when she found the remote in one of the male employee's front pockets. Cringing as his rank smell hit her noise she stood back up. She hated it when corpses began to stink. Good thing she wouldn't be able to smell it away from the front room.

Crossing back behind the counter she entered a hallway off to the side which she reasoned must lead to the room she was looking for. She found it easily and was about to open it when the sound of someone's boots crunching on broken glass reached Fang's ears.

Pulling her gun out she aimed it straight at the source of the noise only to find a man in a similar position. His gun levelled at her heart, he held his gaze strongly on her.

Fang scanned his person. He looked twice her age, forty maybe. Dark skin, afro, wore a green coat, and had a hard look in his eyes which matched hers. Cocoon agent.

Fang stared him down no more willing to lower her gun than he was, but too afraid to shoot lest he do the same. Glaring at the man she received a look much the same.

"Cocoon agent I assume." She growled.

"Pulsian agent I guess." He countered.

Fang smirked, "You'd be right on that count. Name?"

"Like l'd give you that." He hissed maliciously.

"Then I won't give you mine." She replied with a vicious look.

"No need." The man said. "I know exactly who you are. You are Pulse's Iron maiden, formerly Cocoon's. Oerba Yun Fang."

Fang raised an eyebrow, then smiles hatefully, "Good job recognising me, I'll give you an extra point for knowing my last name. So, why do you know so much?"

"Well you are an interesting subject, you went south once you were told the truth of Cocoon destroying your village for the sake of capturing you, presumably by Jilh Nabaat. Successfully defected from Cocoon, first in history in fact. Only one in history to be more exact. The higher ups aren't a fan of you. Have tried many times to have you assassinated, all unsuccessful."

Fang's smirk widened, "So you're close to the higher ups are you?" Her eyes spoke of the volumes of malicious things she wished to inflict upon this man if she could get her hands on him.

But the man laughed, crushing his gun in his hand he bit out, "Oh no, those fuckers can go jump off a cliff for all I care. I'm just an old agent, I hear things now and again." Crushing the firearm harder he threw it to the ground in a fit of rage, "Those fuckers left me out here and ordered me to kill anyone who survived. Civilians, who they just bombed without care to who got hurt! And when I refused, they ordered all those with me to shoot me. I escaped of course, even if it meant shooting all of them, but now I'm stranded out here no different from you 'Iron maiden'. Someone Cocoon just wants to kill."

The man fell victim to a series of hysterical laughs, "Talk about all the years I gave to them, all the faithful service. I've been an agent since I was nineteen years old! I lived my life at Cocoon, met my wife there, had my son there. Had to live with my wife's death on one of their mission when our son wasn't a year old, had to raise him by myself! And one refusal to take an order and they left me to die."

Slamming his foot down hard on the gun at his feet, he screamed, "Cocoon can all go fuck themselves for all I care, cause they certainly don't care for me!"

Huffing in anger, the man clenched his fist at his sides. Fang's smirk only widened. She pressed the button on the remote and the door at her side opened. "I like you." Stepping to the side she entered the safety deposit box room.

The man recovered some of his calm from the outburst and retrieved his gun, "That an invitation?"

"If you want it to be, do you really want to be stuck out there tonight with a bunch of people who want kill you do you?" Fang drawled.

Huffing the man walked into the room after Fang. "Do you really think it's a good idea to show your back to me, I could still shoot you?"

Turning slightly so she could see him Fang said, "If you do you do, plus you sounded sincere enough when you were yelling about Cocoon. Of course you could just be lying about everything and I'm gonna wake up dead in the morning, but I'm willing to take that chance. I don't care so much any longer if a die or not."

"Well that's morbid." The man mumbled to himself, finding a spot to sit at the back of the room against the wall.

Fang sat down similarly at a distance of three metres apart, her gun still held firmly in her hands. The man too kept a strong hold on his weapon.

Tapping her finger against her leg Fang asked, "So why do you know so much about me?"

Humming the man replied slowly, "Well, I heard a few thing before they got of hold of you, a whiff of the plans to set your village alight. The thing about Nabaat telling you about them is just common sense. She was the only one who could have possibly gotten hold of those records who would have shown them to you."

Running that though her head Fang posed another question. "Ok then, how did you know I defected because I'd learnt of the plans?"

"Cocoon figured that was the reason, plus Nabaat screamed as much when she was-" The man paused, and carefully chose his next word, "interrogated."

But Fang caught the meaning behind his words. "So she was punished for helping me?"

The man watched Fang intently for her reaction, but Fang started giggling, "Well too bad for her then." In a much darker tone she admitted, "I can no longer be bothered with that woman anyway."

The man drew away, he'd heard the two had been close. This complete disregard for the other was a little off putting. He guessed it just proved the rumour that the Iron maiden had gone mad.

The two sat in silence for a while until Fang was snapped from her thoughts as a cold chill ran through her. She jumped and wrapped her arms tight around herself as she road it out. It felt like someone was personally breathing ice on her every cell. Pain tore through her, blocking out the world around her. Then as suddenly as it had come it left. She loosened he grip on her arms and relaxed.

The man's eyes were on her in an instance, "What was that?" He asked.

Fang shook her head, "Nothing." But the man's suspicious eyes said that he didn't believe her.

'_Fuck'_ Fang thought in her head. It had been too long since she'd had Seohilen. She was going to have some yesterday but Fate had pestered her to stay with her. She shouldn't have listened. Given there was no way she could foresee a situation like this, but if something had gone wrong it would have at least meant that she wouldn't have to deal with Seohilen withdrawal symptoms. As she was now, she was screwed. She had no way to get a fix, and the symptoms were only going to get worse. The cold chills were the very beginning.

And the way the man stared at her revealed he knew it to be as much. An old agent like him would be well versed in the symptoms of Seohilen addiction. He turned away eventually, but Fang knew he wasn't convinced she was fine.

The two sat by like that as the hours slowly ticked by. Talk was little, weak and ended quickly. They just sat waiting for either sleep or dawn to come.

**…:…**

Serah jumped, the man on the ground in front of her was stirring. She had sat by in the square for hours. Whenever a suspicious person had passed she'd played dead on the ground in case they mean her harm. She was paranoid whoever had instigated this still wished to hurt people.

Sitting back up straight the leaned over Snow as he slowly regained consciousness. Twiddling her fingers anxiously it hit her only now that he might not recognise her. She tried to tell herself it was a stupid thought. Her hair had only been dyed and curled. That thought didn't stop her anxiety though, stupid girl logic.

Grunting, Snow gradually opened his eyes. He slowly began to focus on the form leaning over him. He stared at her for a moment, recognition flashing in his eyes, "Topaz?"

"Serah." She responded immediately, stretching out her hand for him to shake despite the distance between them made the movement awkward.

"What?" he questioned, confused by the name change.

"My real name." She explained.

Rubbing his eyes Snow tried to will wakefulness back into his body. He took the hand Serah outstretched to him and shook it. Trying to get up he winced.

Serah reacted before thinking to the pained look on his face, placing her hands on his chest she tried to coax him to lay back down. But he waved her away and continued with his endeavour to sit upright. He managed eventually, but he put himself through much more pain in the process. His eyes began to clear now and he seemed more aware of himself and his surroundings now. "Hey this is real right, you're really here aren't you? I didn't hit my head did I?"

"No, I'm really here, but you probably did hit your head." Serah told him, an amused expression on her face as he moved to feel the giant bump on his head.

Looking around him he noticed finally the giant disaster zone they were in. Eyeing the place in dumbfounded silence he twisted is head back to Serah, "What happened?"

"I don't know really, someone bombed the place. Only I think those who did are still-"

At hearing a crack on the ground Serah grabbed Snow and forced him to the ground with her so they lay side by side.

"What?" he asked in a too loud voice.

"Shhh, I think the people who did this are still trying to harm civilians. I keep hearing gunshots in the distance, and if the people I think did this did it, then I wouldn't put it past them."

"Who?" He asked again.

"Shhh, close your eyes, play dead."

A person trod close to the two lf them, their steps were heavy so Serah figured they were a man. They stayed there for a while and then moved on. Once the sound of their steps had completely faded Serah spoke up again, "We have to get out of here."

"But what's going on?" Snow asked her earnestly. The look in his eyes made Serah feel sorry for him. She at least had warning of things like this. He was dropped into something completely alien to him.

"I'll explain afterwards, first we need to get somewhere safe."

She helped Snow to his feet, he was a little unsteady at first but he got better as they went on.

Many of the buildings around them were destroyed, but as they worked their way away from the square there were some houses intact. Serah knew there was probably a better alternative that would be safer for them to hide in, but they probably only had ten minutes to sun down and they needed to find somewhere safe when they could still see. So they searched the houses for appropriate places to hide.

After ten minutes or so of this when the sun had all but disappeared for the day Serah opened a door in one of the houses. "This is a walk in pantry." She said to Snow.

Having found no other alternatives in the other houses they were forced to accept this as the best option. Snow entered before her as she held the door open. Tapping on the silver doorknob she discovered, "This door has a lock on it." She paused, "Who the hell puts a lock ln their pantry?"

"Maybe Mama didn't want Papa to sneak midnight snakes in the night." Snow joked from where he sat at the back of the pantry.

Serah pulled a face at him, then turned her head away and tapped the knob again, admitting, "That's strangely plausible. But this is still a messed up house."

Closing the door she pressed in a tab to lock it and sat by Snow.

Watching him worriedly she asked, you're not hurt are you?"

"No." Snow said with a shake of his head, "I'm fine, it hurt a little before but I'm alright now."

Serah had a feeling that had been more of a reactional response rather than a true one.

Clinging to his arm she mumbled slowly, "I missed you."

Placing a hand over hers he told her, "So did I." His face took on a worried look. "What happened to you? Some crazy stuff happened at school and then you just up and disappeared.

Looking up at him, Serah looked away guiltily, "I'm probably not good at explaining it, Fang would do a better job."

"Fang?"

"The woman who called herself Atla, that is her real name." Serah explained tilting her head up. Looking back down again she lay her head against Snow. "But if you really want to know I'll tell you, we have all the way til dawn after all."

And her story was going to take a while.

* * *

><p><em>Hoped you liked the chapter.<em>

_This one came out better them the last chapter I wrote for my other story so I'm happy I guess._

_Anyway, please review I'll deeply appreciate it greatly._


	18. Turn around

_Hello everyone welcome to the eighteen chapter of SSI._

_Sorry, I believe I promised this chapter a month ago two months ago. I feel really bad about that. It was a lot of school though and assignments and stuff. Though I was doing a lot of procrastination (on both this and my assignments for that matter.) so I probably could have had this out possible three weeks ago if I wasn't such a lazy idiot. Sometimes if I'm taking too long to update a story feel free to PM me, chances are I'm actually procrastinating. But for the next three weeks I need to work on finishing my assignments asap._

_Also you'll find if there's anything stopping me from writing I've put a message up on my profile, so feel free to check that too._

_Anyway hope you enjoy the chapter, and please review. I've had a terrible week and since Naruto's finished I no longer have the weekly updates to cheer me up. Seriously, you have no idea how much your reviews make me happy, they brighten up my entire day, and I really need that happiness right now._

**Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy, Square Enix does.**

* * *

><p><em><strong>Turn around<strong>_

Snow whistled in disbelief, that story had been a big one. Beside him Serah twiddled her fingers shyly, unsure whether or not he would believe her.

As it stood Cocoon and Pulse were the two biggest names in the world, everyone grew up viewing their existence as a norm. Hearing this dark truth may have been hard to take in. But if Snow chose to believe her, the destruction zone around them would serve to her advantage and reinforce her story's truth.

"Secret agents." He said finally, still questioning the term as he said it. He rolled the word through his head but it wouldn't seem to sink in.

Serah wasn't sure what to think of this reaction so she tried to provoke another one, "We are anything they need us to be, spies, guard, assassins."

Snow's reaction was slow. He stared at the dark ceiling of the pantry as if analysing its every age worn mark. Eventually he turned to her, "And you?" His eyes were worried.

Serah shook her head, "I'm no Assassin if that's what you're worried about. I was a spy."

"Worried about you being an Assassin?" Snow shook his head, "No Serah I was worried about you. A spy, think about how hurt you could have been if you were caught, they might have even killed you. At least an Assassin gets out of the danger zone, you'd have to stay there. Serah I don't even want to think about what might have happened to you."

Serah's eyes widened. 'Worried for her' had said. She smiled. She had been so scared for a second there that this truth would make him turn away from her. This loyalty made her love for him grow.

"Thank you." She said.

"For worrying? Serah that's just my duty. If I didn't I'd be a pretty bad boyfriend wouldn't I?" He told her smiling.

She smiled too, encouraged by his cheerfulness. "I still think it deserves a thank you. Also knowing you, I think you'd be worried about me even if I was a stranger. No girlfriend title needed."

Snow scratched the back of his head, "You'd probably be right about that." He admitted.

Things were silent for a while until Snow finally saw reason to ask. "What about you then? How'd you end up in this situation, like why were you at the school?

"The school?" Serah took a moment to formula her answer. She paused shyly before answering, she didn't see him loving the answer. "I got caught once when I was on a mission, a really important mission. Someone found me out. Fang saved me, but Cocoon were after my blood afterwards. Pulse put me into hiding and inserted a chip into my head which made my brain mimic the symptoms of amnesia."

Snow eyes widened on the reveal on this little factoid but Serah just gave a look that said, 'yes, I just said that, you are not having auditory hallucinations.'

The look toned down some but he still blinked his eyes not particularly able to swallow that fact.

"So," Serah continued choking down a laugh that look brought out in her. "When you met me not even I knew this stuff. They gave me a fake name, a fake background story, and a fake caretaker. I dyed my hair blonde at this caretakers 'light-hearted' suggestion, and I curled it out of boredom. And as the random Cocoon agents stationed in the school didn't have a detailed knowledge of what I looked like this was enough to pull the wool over their eyes. Fang and Lebreau were also sent to the school to watch over me, soon even one of Cocoon's top agents was stationed there when they began to suspect that I was there."

"Who?"

"Rosch." Serah pronounced, "If you've taken note he's since disappeared from that school along with me, Lebreau and Fang.

"But apart from that there's not much else to tell you. Cocoon narrowed down who I was and attacked, Pulse reacted and I was brought back to the HQ. The chip was taken out of my brain and well, here I am. I was spying on a Cocoon executive who just happened to be in this square yesterday at the wrong time. You were too I suppose?"

Snow sighed, "Yeah Maqui told me it would be interesting, bored the hell out of me though."

"Maqui? Was he here with you?" Serah asked suddenly panicking.

Snow nodded sadly, knowing its possible implications. Serah was too scared to ask if he knew if he was alright, but as Snow was unconscious when she found him it wasn't like he'd know anyway.

This put a dampener on their conversation for a time and neither of them spoke further on the subject.

They were quiet for possibly another fifteen minutes more when Snow asked, "So, what are we going to do now?"

Serah thought about her answer, "Well I think we should probably try getting out if here, but first," she said gesturing to the stocked pantry around them, "let's eat breakfast."

**…:...**

Fang opened her eyes. She'd fallen asleep sometime during the night. Adjusting her position, she snuck a glance at the Cocoon agent beside her. He was quietly dozing with his eyes closed. She returned her gaze to the front. So far it looked like it hadn't been bad to fall asleep next to the stranger. She was alive at least and the rest received would be useful for the day to come. Chances were she was going to have to traverse a fair distance within the day.

Sitting back she ran some situations through her head. She didn't know the extent of the damage dealt by the bombs or what was going on with Pulse at the moment. This blurred whether or not returning to HQ was a plausible idea. Likely it wasn't as this was an opportune moment for Cocoon to attack Pulse. If the planners of this bombing had any brains they would have double played their advantages and killed Anima and attacked Pulse with the same stone.

That thought was worrying even to Fang. She scrunched up her hand, Fate was still at HQ. If someone so much as laid a hand on her they'd lose it along with their head. Not that Fate couldn't take care of herself, but the height difference between her and many members of their line of work was troublesome in fights. She'd learn that head on back when she was young.

So, one would hope that maybe the HQ wasn't in the bad, but logic dictated otherwise.

With that off the board there was the other option was skipping town. Finding some way out onto the highways and hitching a ride to the closet town with a Pulse HQ. Harder and more time consuming, but the more likely option if Bodhum's HQ was down and out.

Fang ran the numbers through her head. It took roughly six hours to walk the width of the city. She was somewhere around the midway mark, the HQ was two hours walk away from here, the highway three. All well and good on a normal day, but those times were only if you walked a steady pace on a straight path.

With the bomb damaged town, fallen debris everywhere and Cocoon agents out to kill you that wouldn't happen. If she was lucky she could get to the HQ by dark, but the highway was out of the question.

Fang purged her lips. She couldn't leave here without even trying to ascertain Fate's condition. She wouldn't forgive herself if she tried. So that left her a rough time of two, maybe three days to escape this city. Her eyes sought out the sleeping man. He looked fit enough, but she didn't know for sure how he'd hold up. The question persisted whether he's slow her down or keep up.

Unfortunately Fan didn't have a choice but to wait until he woke up and they made their way out of this bank. She tapped her fingers on the surface of her jeans. This was going to be a long day.

The man woke not so long afterwards. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and sat up lazily. He looked to Fang with tired eyes, "Seems you didn't kill me in my sleep."

"Seems you didn't kill me either."

The man watched the room tiredly for a little while longer before he went on to shake himself awake. He rubbed his eyes again as if his first attempt at clearing them hadn't been especially successful. "So, what's happening today?"

"You have no intention of returning?" Fang clarified.

The man shook his head, "Not in a million years."

"Kay then. We'll try and head for the highways hitch a ride to another town. You can go into hiding, though they're going to kill you."

"Don't I know it." The man grumbled.

"Oh, and most likely that son you mentioned before too." Fang added.

This caught the man's attention and he gave Fang a warning look to tell her to stop that line of thought there.

Fang didn't overly care, instead she told him in a dark tone, "Don't worry, if Cocoons attacked the Pulse HQ my friend's daughter is probably dead as well."

"Isn't the same." The man muttered.

"Is when I'm the only mother figure she's ever had." Fang murmured bitterly.

The man seemed to hear it but didn't respond. At the very least it shut him up.

The two exited from the safety deposit box room and closed the door behind them. As they were walking down the hallway which led back to the front room Fang thought to ask, "So am I going to get a name out of you?"

"Sure." The man drawled lazily. "The name's Sazh."

"Well then Sazh, where are we heading today? We can take any number of paths, which one do you think will be the least infested with people with shot guns?" Fang queried sounding much like a circus presenter.

Sazh scoffed at her tone, obviously finding fault with it. "If we're gonna get anywhere we'll need food, people'll drop if they're forced to walk the length of this town on an empty stomach."

Fang hummed. On this he was right, she realised as much earlier. Dropping her jovial tone she grew serious once more, "That would mean going to the closest shops."

Sazh eyed her as they exited the bank, "Not a fan of meeting an agent hiding away in a house are you? The chances are much slimmer of running into one in a house than that shopping centre. There are much more houses, too many for agents to hide in all of them."

Fang took up a quiet step behind Sazh as they grew wary of the outside world. Her hand wandered down to the gun on her hip, "I'd rather open space than the chance of an agent jumping out of a room and getting the drop on me before I even knew what hit me. If they're anything like me, Cocoon would have taught them to fight in close quarters; I'd rather give none of them the advantage over me."

"Fair enough." Sazh conceded.

They passed by the five blocks between them and the shopping centre at a gradual pace. They kept on their toes about any odd sound, ready to pull the trigger if an agent did in fact pass their way. Stepping over the debris littering the ground their path took them towards the shopping centre.

The car park was a harrowing sight. Dead bodies as far as the eyes could see. The needless slaughter even bothered Fang in its uselessness. Sazh eyed the bodies almost forlornly. He too seemed to revolt in Cocoon ardent slaughter fest.

They left the site behind them and entered the shopping centre. Inside wasn't much better, but they had known to expect it this time. Walking towards a pair of escalators Fang gestured to the man behind her, "You check down there, I'll look up here."

"Sure." The man shrugged, he didn't seem like he'd thought much of her company to begin with. The two parted ways there. Fang ascended the still escalator with soft steps. She didn't want to make loud sounds on the tough metal beneath her feet.

She paused once at the top. The escalator ended facing a line of shops, so, one end of the upstairs. She rounded the Escalator, before her was a long hall of shop on either side of her. She scanned it quickly. She couldn't see anyone up here. Looking harder she tried to see if there was a shop that sold food. She looked all across the long hall. Her eye twitched once she spotted a shop which fitted right into that exact category.

At the exact opposite end of the centre.

Fang resisted the urge to sigh. It would have made more noise than she cared to make. But the goddess most definitely wasn't looking on her with favour today. Not that she ever did.

Fang pulled the gun at her side free and held it at the ready. She couldn't see anyone at the moment but she didn't doubt someone was hiding in one of the stores.

She passed clothing stores, jewellery stores, shoe stores, sport stores, all the while watching frantically for any sudden movement. She cursed the long time it took to reach the shop at the end of the hall.

The wide entrance to the food shop reared its ominous head, it arched over suspiciously as Fang passed the threshold. Once into the store Fang picked up on the feint sounds of movement randomly sounding off somewhere in the distance. She held her gun tighter. Walking up to the aisles she lifted her eyes to read the signs above them. Her best choice would be to go with canned foods. She retrieved a grey canvas bag from under on the counters and began heading for the aisle she needed to go.

The sound of a shoe hitting lino. A man stepped out from one of the aisles. Seeing her he levelled his gun at her. She ducked into the aisle beside her without a moment's notice. She backed up against the shelves. She looked around her. Her eyes caught sight of a little mirror, part of some childrens toy hanging from the shelves. She picked it up and used it to see the man waiting for her to appear again. His gun was still levelled to hit her.

She waited. He didn't move so she silently picked up a food item from behind her and rolled it along the aisle. The man's eyes moved to the side to follow the sound. She took her chance.

She jumped from her hiding spot and shot the man in the chest. He blew backwards. His blood spurted from the wound and pooled around him. Fang retreated into the aisle. Where she was standing left her too open for attack.

At the end of the aisle she got low and checked for anyone else. No one. The canned food aisle was still two aisles ahead. Staying low she crept towards it. The noise of a conversation hit her ears. Stiffening up her eyes sought out the source of the sounds. There was three men standing around the deli thirty meters away. They hadn't seen her so Fang slipped into the canned food aisle. Gradually she snuck a look in their direction again. They were too far off to hit with her handgun. She would have to coax them to come closer. She picked up a can and threw it two aisles diagonal to her. It made a loud bang and three men dashed to the sound. A stupid move in Fang's books. She rounded the corner and shot twice. Two of them went down, but the other reacted and she had to duck her head back into the aisle. He continued to fire at her and rushed to the head of her aisle.

He was a kid, and that was a rookie's mistake. She looked up to him where she sat on the floor, his gaze landing far above her head. She shot him in the chest and his blood splattered over her face. He fell to the floor.

Wiping the blood off indifferently she got up and began collecting cans.

**…:…**

Sazh wondered down the line of shop, ears open to the world around him. It was quiet. Though he wasn't sure whether or not to call that a good sign or not. Anyone could be hiding around the corner, hidden in one of the shops. He didn't let his guard down.

Occasionally he came across a fallen body gone cold. There weren't many inside, though store products littered the floor caused much mess. There were evacuation notices still on the big TV screens on either end of the shops, so he guessed that people had been trying to get out. Going by the number of bodies inside he guessed that they must have been shot later on trying to avoid the disaster. The bodies on the outside had looked to be in a worse state.

After reaching the end of the store he reasoned that whatever food store that was here must be upstairs. So he back tracked a bit to a fountain further in. It was near an escalator so he could also signal that Fang woman as she was walking back. Hopefully with food and luckily with no gunshot wounds.

He stood by the fountain waiting patiently. Yet for all his watchfulness, he still didn't predict the bullet that whooshed past his head until it was already past. "Fuck." He swore spinning on his heel to see a group of five men jumping over a barrier surrounding the little circular space that housed the fountain. He fell to his knees to avoid the next slurry of bullets as he hid behind the stone structure in front of him.

Peering over the edge he shot off a couple rounds. One grazed one of the men's shoulder but the rest missed their mark. He ducked back behind the fountain. He swore under his breath. They were good shots. Seemed like Cocoon had actually put some men down here that weren't simple rookies. Silent as hell too they were. For all his trying he hadn't remotely heard them advancing.

He tapped his finger against the weapon. That left the question of what he was going to do. Sure he was a better shot than anyone of them, but one experienced gunner against five good shots wasn't an equal equation. He was still outgunned.

He risked shooting off another couple at the group. One took a shot to the chest. Sazh savoured the feeling of victory, but the remaining four had begun to slink closer. That and the fifth man hadn't taken a serious shot. High chest, by the shoulder, he'd be out an arm, not even a lung. Lucky that for now he was preoccupied with stanching the wound.

Sazh felt a sense of panic building up. What was he to do? He could charge them, or try and retreat maybe, but all increased likeliness of getting hit as much as they could have helped him. He grit his teeth.

"You can't…"

Sazh jolted to awareness. Somewhere behind him he heard the sound of shuffling and people talking.

"I… too"

He listened harder.

"It's… don't go."

"I must." A last voice said with finality.

Sazh jumped back to awareness of his current fight, a bullet had flown scarily close to his head. He jumped back up and shot off another few rounds with not so much effect.

Another gun went off behind him. He freaked out that one of the men had got to his back without his notice. Sure enough when he looked around there was a bullet coming right at him.

A wind gust passed by his head.

Wait. He realised, not at him. He turned around to see a second man get blown off his feet a clean shot to the heart.

Past him.

A second bullet blasted off the head of the already injured man. The three men left took flight to the pillars surrounding the circular room for protection and watched intently.

Sazh too turned his gaze to see a young girl with black hair tied at both sides and dark murky coloured skin. Her eyes were bright yellow and her face painfully familiar. He returned his eyes to the remaining enemies. Familiar or not, if she was going to help he wasn't going to question when there was still trash to take care of.

Within a moment she was by his side at the fountain. She rose her head over the fountain and helped him shoot down the hiding men. Sazh marvelled at her control of her weapon, her steady hold and exact aiming. But she took a dangerous half a millisecond too long to ready her shot. Which if her reaction time hadn't been as fast as it was, would have gotten her head blown off long before now.

Sazh reloaded and continued his assault. Slowly they made head way. They began to win against their enemies little by little, making them cower back. Soon their numbers was reduced to a lone agent as his mate was taken down by a well-aimed bullet from the gun of the black haired girl.

The man grew rash, scared. He betted his all on one last mad man move and dashed into the firing zone. It took them both by surprise and neither had time to react as he used the girl's slow draw time to his advantage and levelled his gun almost point blank to her head.

'Bang!'

The man fell dead, falling into the fountain before them with a loud splash.

Both stared at the body in disbelief. At the sound of metal hitting floor Sazh rose his eyes to see Fang standing along the edge of an opening between the first stories and second. A grey canvas bag rested by her feet and her gun rested in her hand.

The girl at Sazh's side stepped back. Behind them he could hear shuffling, the other person whose voice he'd heard before he figured.

Meanwhile he saw looking back up to Fang that her eyes were locked solely on the girl at his side, her gaze incredulous beyond belief.

The girl at his side fled.

"Wait!" Fang yelled urgently. Dropping even her gun she grabbed the railing and jumped down to the lower story. She landed hard on tiles and winced. "Wait." She reiterated growing frantic.

She dashed after the black haired girl, "I said wait god damn it!"

Easily catching up Fang snatched her arm, "Zhdat!" she screamed.

"Ya ne mogu!" the girl screamed in what was a clearly accented voice.

Fang breathed in a breath, "Turn around please." She pleaded desperately.

"No!" the girl denied.

Tears welled in Fang's eyes, "Please…just please, turn around, Vanille."

* * *

><p><em>And fun.<em>

_I was really worrying about botching this chapter so can you tell me of it's alright. Simply telling me your enjoying the story or something simple like that would be fine as well. As I mentioned in the too authors note, I just need some reviews so I can be happy about something, my home's a little depressing right now. Anything you guys have to tell me would be welcome. Even if its complete nonsense, my reviews get like that a lot anyway, it'd probably make me laugh._


End file.
